Cities of the Plain: A Novel (Border Trilogy, Vol. 3) Review

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(More customer reviews)I usually read every night to my wife. We've gone through dozens of books together in our marriage, and several months ago, I read "All the Pretty Horses" to her. She loved it, and would not let me read her anything else until we had read McCarthy's entire trilogy. We just finished it.
This book, the third in that trilogy, has its shortcomings, but it is still one amazing piece of work.
In this book, John Grady Cole--the genius horsetrainer of "All the Pretty Horses"--and Billy Parham--the kindhearted nomad of "The Crossing"--come together as ranch hands on a New Mexico estancia. Both are older than they were in the previous books--Billy much older--but both are kindred spirits whose stories connect with and affect each another.
The book tends more heavily toward the lengthy philosophical monologues that appear only occasionally in the trilogy's earlier volumes, and the whole story at momemnts goes a little bit long if you've just read the two previous volumes right before.
However, the writing is gorgeous, and haunting. For example, in one passage, a dead calf's "ribcage lay with curved tines upturned on the gravel plain like some carnivorous plant brooding in the barren dawn." Yeah.
And the ending--the ending is amazing. It might not be quite what you expect or ask for, but it is thrilling in its perfectness, in its completess, in how true it feels.
It left me holding the book like a priceless religious relic, re-reading its back cover, flipping back through it to parts I had marked, reluctant and unwilling to let go of these characters or their world.
Cormac McCarthy is a literary genius. He has made the West tangible, taken its most ineffable qualities and turned them into words. He makes me homesick for the place I already live.
Do not start with this book, if you've never read his other works, but do work up to it. Do read it.

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