Reading Order
All the Pretty Horses Reading Order
All the Pretty Horses (1992) by Cormac McCarthy is the first volume of the Border Trilogy and the winner of the National Book Award — McCarthy's most accessible and most romantic novel, the story of John Grady Cole, a 16-year-old Texas boy who rides into Mexico in 1949 with his friend Lacey Rawlins after losing his family's ranch, becomes a legendary horse trainer on a hacienda, falls in love with the hacienda owner's daughter Alejandra, and is arrested and imprisoned in a Mexican jail. All the Pretty Horses is McCarthy's deliberate departure from the nihilism of Blood Meridian — it is a love story, in the romantic tradition of the Western, about the last of a kind of man and a kind of world that no longer has a place. John Grady Cole is the cowboy hero, genuinely skilled with horses in a way that is practically mystical, genuinely in love with Alejandra in a way that is genuinely romantic, and genuinely out of time — the world he believes in does not exist anymore. The novel's sadness is the sadness of the elegy: something beautiful is ending, and John Grady Cole can feel it. The novel was adapted into a film with Matt Damon and Penélope Cruz in 2000.
Where to start
All the Pretty Horses — the Vintage International paperback. The most accessible entry point to McCarthy's major novels. Readers who want to start with McCarthy but are not ready for Blood Meridian should start here.
Complete All the Pretty Horses Book List
- 1Buy
All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy·1992·The novel — John Grady Cole's journey into Mexico, his work with horses, his love for Alejandra, and his imprisonment; McCarthy's most accessible and most romantic novel; National Book Award winner. - 2Buy
The Crossing
Cormac McCarthy·1994·The Border Trilogy's second volume — Billy Parham's three journeys into Mexico; more meditative and philosophical than All the Pretty Horses, and the companion in McCarthy's Border Trilogy landscape and preoccupations. - 3Buy
Cities of the Plain
Cormac McCarthy·1998·The Border Trilogy's conclusion — John Grady Cole and Billy Parham together; the convergence of the trilogy's two protagonists and the elegiac conclusion of McCarthy's examination of the dying West. - 4Buy
No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy·2005·McCarthy's most accessible other major novel — the companion in his West Texas/Mexico setting; where All the Pretty Horses is romantic and elegiac, No Country is forensic and nihilistic, and comparing the two shows McCarthy's full range. - 5Buy
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy·1985·McCarthy's most extreme major novel — the essential companion; the Judge's border violence is the historical version of the world John Grady Cole rides into, and comparing the two novels reveals what McCarthy is doing when he romanticizes the border. - 6Buy
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry·1985·McMurtry's Pulitzer-winning Western — the companion in the late-Western tradition; Call and McCrae's cattle drive is the epic version of John Grady Cole's journey, and McMurtry's elegiac attitude toward the cowboy life is the popular-fiction companion to McCarthy's literary version. - 7Buy
The Old Gringo
Carlos Fuentes·1985·Fuentes's historical novel — the companion in Latin American fiction about the intersection of American and Mexican cultures and histories; the old gringo's journey into revolutionary Mexico is the Mexican-literary-fiction companion to John Grady Cole's journey. - 8Buy
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway·1940·Hemingway's Spanish Civil War novel — the formal predecessor; John Grady Cole's Mexico is McCarthy's version of Hemingway's Spain, and the prose styles are in dialogue — both spare, masculine, and concerned with the question of how to live with courage in a world that is ending.
All the Pretty Horses — Frequently Asked Questions
What is All the Pretty Horses about?
All the Pretty Horses follows John Grady Cole, a 16-year-old boy who loses his family's Texas ranch when his grandfather dies and his mother refuses to keep it — she sells it to pursue her acting career. John Grady and his friend Lacey Rawlins ride south into Mexico, where John Grady's extraordinary skill with horses gets him a position as a horse trainer on the Hacienda de Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción. He falls in love with Alejandra, the hacienda owner's beautiful daughter, who is promised to a different life by her great-aunt Alfonsa. After a brief love affair, John Grady and Rawlins are arrested — partly because of the love affair, partly because of a violent encounter with another boy named Blevins — and imprisoned in a Mexican jail where John Grady must fight to survive.
Why is John Grady Cole considered McCarthy's most romantic hero?
John Grady Cole is McCarthy's explicit homage to the romantic Western hero — the cowboy who is genuinely great at what he does (his communion with horses borders on the mystical; he can break a string of wild horses in a way that the hacienda workers call miraculous), genuinely in love, and genuinely out of time. Unlike most McCarthy protagonists, who are defined by survival and violence, John Grady Cole is defined by love — his love for horses, his love for Alejandra, his love for the ranch he lost. His tragedy is that he has the qualities of the Western hero at exactly the moment when there is no longer a world that can accommodate those qualities. The novel is an elegy for the cowboy as a possible way of being in the world.
How does All the Pretty Horses relate to the Border Trilogy?
All the Pretty Horses is the first volume of McCarthy's Border Trilogy (followed by The Crossing in 1994 and Cities of the Plain in 1998). The three novels share a setting (the Texas-Mexico border in the mid-20th century), a landscape (the desert Southwest and northern Mexico), and a set of themes (the dying of the Old West, the young man's journey into Mexico, the encounter with a world that is ending). The second volume, The Crossing, is not a sequel — it follows a different protagonist (Billy Parham) and is more meditative and philosophical. The third volume, Cities of the Plain, brings John Grady Cole and Billy Parham together for the trilogy's elegiac conclusion.
What is McCarthy's relationship to the Western genre?
McCarthy has said that he considers himself to be working in the tradition of William Faulkner, not the Western genre — but his novels are deeply engaged with Western genre conventions and are in explicit dialogue with them. All the Pretty Horses uses the conventional Western plot (boy goes West, is tested, encounters violence and love, must decide what he is) but treats it as an elegy rather than a triumph. Blood Meridian uses the conventional Western setting (the Texas-Mexico border, Apache raids, mercenaries) to present the opposite of the Western genre's moral universe: there is no heroism, only violence. No Country for Old Men is a contemporary Western crime novel about what happens after the Western's moral order has collapsed. Together, McCarthy's border novels are the most serious engagement with the Western as a literary form since Owen Wister's The Virginian.
What should I read after All the Pretty Horses?
After All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing (1994) and Cities of the Plain (1998) complete the Border Trilogy. No Country for Old Men (2005) is the most accessible companion in McCarthy's other major novels. For the Western literary tradition, Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is the most important companion. Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls is the most important formal predecessor in the romantic-masculine mode McCarthy is working in. Blood Meridian is the essential companion if you want to understand what McCarthy is doing when he romanticizes the border.
Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.