All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac Mccarthy

How good was Frank Muller?

I just yesterday finished listening to All the Pretty Horses on audio and I can't get the book out of my head. I absolutely love westerns even though I haven't read a lot of them and haven't seen as many western movies as I want to and know that they just live inside my head in their own little world.

But I love 'em. But I love Cormac Mccarthy a little more. I've been haunted by The Road ever since I listened to it about four years ago. There are images from that book I just can't shake, it was amazing. No Country for Old Men is always close at hand, so I can read bits and pieces of it when I'm too lazy to do anything else. Blood Meridian showed me what the devil was up to in Mexico.

All the Pretty Horses was well written, and drew such a good picture of Mexico in the 1940's that I felt like I was there. Mccarthy is an artist.

This post is just a love letter to Mccarthy's words, not a big review of the book. I wouldn't know where to start, it's a telling of what happened to 16-year old John Grady Cole when he needed to go to Mexico. The book is full of love, violence, horses and Mccarthy's vengeful God.

I'm not a religious man, but I'm afraid of Mccarthy's God.

And damn, do I love westerns. I love the time period and I love horses and I love that people live off the land and everyone is a sinner and they're all filthy from the land. This book is all of that.

This is just a recommendation: go read All the Pretty Horses. Or listen to the audio version, like I did. Frank Muller is a fantastic, perfect translator of the story. Listening to it, I felt like he was poured into the story and was part of the words. It was amazing.

That's my rambling post. I don't want to give anything away. I don't want to give away any of the landscape or the horses or the men or the girl or the violence or Texas or Mexico.

All the Pretty Horses is the first book in a three volume series. I just started reading The Crossing on my Kindle and I started reading it late last night and had to finally force myself to put it down. I got way too tired and couldn't stop myself. The book was singing to me.

An hour later I woke up because, like I always do when I read a good book, I was dreaming that I was still reading the damned thing. When I sleep, my brain keeps reading, keeps writing. It's weird.

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