Cities of the Plain - Softcover

McCarthy, Cormac

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330390163 ISBN 13: 9780330390163

Publisher: Picador, 2007

Synopsis

VOLUME THREE OF THE BORDER TRILOGY

In Cities of the Plain, two men marked by the boyhood adventures of All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing now stand together, between their vivid pasts and uncertain futures, to confront a country changing beyond recognition.

In the fall of 1952, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are cowboys on a New Mexico ranch encroached upon from the north by the military. On the southern horizon are the mountains of Mexico, where one of the men is drawn again and again, in this story of friendships and passion, to a love as dangerous as it is inevitable.

‘In a lovely and terrible landscape of natural beauty and impending loss we find John Grady; a young cowboy of the old school, trusted by men and horses, and a fragile young woman, whose salvation becomes his obsession . . . McCarthy makes the sweeping plains a miracle’ Scotsman

‘This haunting, deeply felt novel completes one of the literary masterworks of the 1990s’ Daily Telegraph

‘The completed trilogy emerges as a landmark in American literature’ Guardian

About this title

Review:

On a Texan ranch, soon after the second world war, a group of solitary, inarticulately lonely men gathers to work animals as the sun sets for good on the mythic American West. All of these men nurse losses both personal (siblings or wives) and collective (a shared lifestyle and philosophy). Among them is John Grady Cole, the adolescent hero of the first book in Cormac McCarthy's Border trilogy, All the Pretty Horses. John Grady remains the magnificent horseman he always was, and he still dreams too much. On the ranch, he meets Billy Parham, whose own tragic sojourn through Mexico in The Crossing, the second book of the set, continues to quietly suffocate him. The two form a friendship that will nurture both but save neither from the destiny that McCarthy's characters always sense lurching to meet them.

Soaked in storm-heavy atmosphere but brightened by the ranchers' easy camaraderie and gentle humour, Cities of the Plain surprises with its sweetness. The awkward doomed-romance plot at the centre of this tight, concise novel fails to convince, but, remarkably, does little to undercut the book's impact. What lingers here, and what matters, are the brooding, eerie portraits of the plains and the riders, glimpsed mostly alone but occasionally leaning together, who slip across them, over the horizon and into memory. -- Glen Hirshberg

Review:

" An American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century." --San Francisco Chronicle
" Grave and majestic.... McCarthy has created an imaginative oeuvre greater and deeper than any single book. Such writers wrestle with the gods themselves." --Washington Post Book World
" Showcases Mr. McCarthy's gifts as an old-fashioned storyteller.... His most readable, emotionally engaging novel yet." --The New York Times
" Soars as few novels have in recent years...a work of which any writer would be proud." --The Philadelphia Inquirer
" If you love classic narrative, quest stories, adventure stories of high order transformed by one of the lapidary masters of contemporary American fiction, now is your hour of triumph."
--Chicago Tribune
" Captures a way of life so unspoken and deep that most people never knew it existed--. [McCarthy] can go places in prose as remote as a mountain pass in a high wind." --The Boston Globe

"An American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century."--San Francisco Chronicle
"Grave and majestic.... McCarthy has created an imaginative oeuvre greater and deeper than any single book. Such writers wrestle with the gods themselves." --Washington Post Book World
"Showcases Mr. McCarthy's gifts as an old-fashioned storyteller.... His most readable, emotionally engaging novel yet." --The New York Times
"Soars as few novels have in recent years...a work of which any writer would be proud." --The Philadelphia Inquirer
"If you love classic narrative, quest stories, adventure stories of high order transformed by one of the lapidary masters of contemporary American fiction, now is your hour of triumph."
--Chicago Tribune
"Captures a way of life so unspoken and deep that most people never knew it existed--. [McCarthy] can go places in prose as remote as a mountain pass in a high wind.

"An American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Grave and majestic.... McCarthy has created an imaginative oeuvre greater and deeper than any single book. Such writers wrestle with the gods themselves." --Washington Post Book World

"Showcases Mr. McCarthy's gifts as an old-fashioned storyteller.... His most readable, emotionally engaging novel yet." --The New York Times

"Soars as few novels have in recent years...a work of which any writer would be proud." --The Philadelphia Inquirer

"If you love classic narrative, quest stories, adventure stories of high order transformed by one of the lapidary masters of contemporary American fiction, now is your hour of triumph."
--Chicago Tribune

"Captures a way of life so unspoken and deep that most people never knew it existed--. [McCarthy] can go places in prose as remote as a mountain pass in a high wind."--The Boston Globe

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0330390163
• ISBN 13: 9780330390163
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304