Wednesday, February 29, 2012

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

Listened to this as an audio book read by Brad Pitt. I loved it! He has the perfect brooding, lonely cowboy voice for a story like this. The Crossing is book two of the Border Trilogy series and although it's not as action-packed as book one, All The Pretty Horses, it's still a really good story. The characters aren't the same, but the setting of Southwestern United States and Mexico in the 1930s and 40s is. Book one is all about John Grady Cole; and book two is all about brothers Billy and Boyd Parham. The two stories and characters only come together in Cities of the Plain, which is book three.

Cormac McCarthy is an astounding writer. His dialogue and description are as sparse and dry as the desert these stories are set in. The journeys are arduous and the characters fascinating, brooding, mysterious. There's a strong theme of brotherhood and loyalty in both books, along with youth and the desire to do right. There are a few passages in Spanish that are sometimes hard to follow but not impossible. Some readers dislike them but I think they add to the authenticity and, really, are not that hard to interpret from the context.

In The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy fulfills the promise of All the Pretty Horses and at the same time give us a work that is darker and more visionary. a novel with the unstoppable momentum of a classic western and the elegiac power of a lost American myth. In the late 1930s, sixteen-year-old Billy Parham captures a she-wolf that has been marauding his family's ranch. But instead of killing it, he decides to take it back to the mountains of Mexico. With that crossing, he begins an arduous and often dreamlike journey into a country where men meet ghosts and violence strikes as suddenly as heat-lightening - -  a world where there is no order 'save which death has put there.' An essential novel by any measure, The Crossing is luminous and appalling, a book that touches, stops, and starts the heart and mind at once. (shelfari)

12 comments:

Shrink to Fit said...

Wonderful review! I'm so going to listen to this one! Great writing AND Brad Pitt! Life is good :)

Shrink to Fit said...

Well, after much searching, I don't think I'll be able to find this one :(

Kailana said...

I have a copy of this book, but not the audio. I have only read The Road by him, but I look forward to more.

Kayla said...

Brad Pitt records audio books? Interesting.

The only McCarthy book I've read is The Road, which I loved, and I really want to read more of him. I hadn't heard of this book before.

Trish said...

Shrink - I also had a hard time tracking down a copy of this one. But my library finally found the whole trilogy on CD at another library and ordered it in for me. The whole process took about a month, though.

Kailana - The Road is a good book too, isn't it? His style of writing actually works really well as a story to be told out loud. If you can get your hands on this set I think you'll really like it.

Kayla - Who knew, right? He does a really good job with these books.

Sam (Tiny Library) said...

I've let to read any of his books. My husband HATED The Road and it's kind of put me off. Was Brad Pitt a good narrator? Wonder how much he got paid....

Trish said...

Brad Pitt has just the right kind of voice for the characters and pacing of this story. I don't know if he's done any others, or if he would be as good.

What he got paid? It'd be fun to know, wouldn't it!? I'd also like to know if that's the way he sounds to Angie and his kids.

Kristi said...

I didn't realize that it was a trilogy. I have All the Pretty Horses on my shelf still. I must get to it soon. I'm glad you enjoyed this one as well. The Brad Pitt narration probably helped. :)

Trish said...

I know, weird huh? With all the attention Pretty Horses gets you'd think the other books would be on the radar somewhere. I didn't realize it was a trilogy until last year when I saw a boxed set at a book store. Yeah, Brad Pitt - he's good.

laughingwolf said...

sound interesting... thx trish

[what i find jarring is the different font, lower case [c] in your post... where did IT come from? most annoying! it's NOT there in the italics part...]

Trish said...

Hmm I don't know what to make of the font thing you're talking about. It all looks the same from here.

laughingwolf said...

it's squished, sideways...