All the Pretty Horses is a book divided in thirds: the first part built on adventure; the second on violence; and the third on redemption.
Of them, the second part, I felt, was most compelling: for it's here that McCarthy's novel explores - often in brutal detail - the reality lurking behind all that beautiful western scenery.
This reality is an uncompromising one: it's one filled with youthful zeal and red sunsets, but also with harsh characters bent on retribution and revenge.
The result is a story of self-discovery through struggle, a book that extends that traditional American tale of the outsider seeking his place in society.
McCarthy weaves a complex emotional tapestry, and in the end seems to suggest that wandering - with all the love and loss it includes - is itself a form of revelation.
All the Pretty Horses is not a perfect book. But there are sections - amidst that raw, jagged narrative - that come close. The last word is reserved for McCarthy and his hero (of sorts), John Grady Cole:
"Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily."
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