|
Loading...
LibraryThing recommendations
Member recommendationsLoading...
won't like
will probably not like
will probably like
will like
will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Not quite as good as the first part, but still a fascinating read. Can't wait to start reading the next one! (  ) Jonoen | Jan 5, 2010 |  Our hero wanders about the southwestern American countryside and crosses into Mexico several times, sleeps on the plains, waters the horses, and looks at the stars. But the pages and pages of tranquility are broken, suddenly and without warning, by violence and horrific sights. Probably better than "All the Pretty Horses", but certainly not easy to read. (  ) alissamarie | Oct 25, 2009 | Our hero wanders about the southwestern American countryside and crosses into Mexico several times, sleeps on the plains, waters the horses, and looks at the stars. But the pages and pages of tranquility are broken, suddenly and without warning, by violence and horrific sights. Probably better than "All the Pretty Horses", but certainly not easy to read. ( ) alissamarie | Oct 25, 2009 | Our hero wanders about the southwestern American countryside and crosses into Mexico several times, sleeps on the plains, waters the horses, and looks at the stars. But the pages and pages of tranquility are broken, suddenly and without warning, by violence and horrific sights. Probably better than "All the Pretty Horses", but certainly not easy to read. ( ) alissamarie | Oct 25, 2009 | Amazing. The comparisons to Faulkner and Hemingway are apt but there's the Latino flavor too. I'm not just referring to the setting in Mexico or the copious use of Spanish. (And I could understand almost all the Spanish! This would be a good novel to recommend to second semester Spanish students--a good motivator to learn more.) There's also the feeling of Latino literature. The way many LA writers tell a tale. The Mexican characters verge on the allegorical or the magical realist. I thought of how Fellini would film this--the caravan of actors, the opera singer bathing, the nameless girl barely escaping the gang of ladrones/rapists/murderers. And the way the Mexican characters talk! Big themes, the meaning of life, God, civil war. Contrast this with the laconic (though colorfully idiomatic) language of the American characters. Or should I say the characters when in America? Finally, very near the end, we get about a paragraph's work of self talk from Billy, told to an unsympathetic gringo who happens upon his campfire. What's that all about? How much has Billy learned? ( )1  Periodista | Jan 14, 2009 | 
 Mr. McCarthy, because he is interested in the mythic shape of lives, has always been interested in the young and the old or, if not the old, then those who have already performed some act so deep in their natures (often horrific, though not always) that it forecloses the idea of possibility. "Doomed enterprises," Mr. McCarthy's narrator remarks, "divide lives forever into the then and the now." So "The Crossing" is full of encounters between the young boys, who look so much like the pure arc of possibility, and the old they meet on the road, all of whom seem impelled, as if innocence were one of the vacuums that nature abhors, to tell them their stories, or prophesy, or give them advice.
References to this work on external resources.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Book description |
|
This is a McCarthy novel, not Old Yeller, and so Billy's trek inevitably becomes more ominous than sweet. It boasts some chilling meditations on the simple ferocity McCarthy sees as necessary for all creatures who aim to continue living. But Billy is McCarthy's most loving--and therefore damageable--character, and his story has its own haunted melancholy.
Billy eventually returns to his ranch. Then, finding himself and his world changed, he returns to Mexico with his younger brother, and the book begins meandering. Though full of hypnotically barren landscapes and McCarthy's trademark western-gothic imagery (like the soldier who sucks eyes from sockets), these latter stages become tedious at times, thanks partly to the female characters, who exist solely as ghosts to haunt the men.
But that opening is glorious, and the whole book finally transcends its shortcomings to achieve a grim and poignant grandeur. --Glen Hirshberg
(retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:11:24 -0500)
The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details.
Quick Links |
Wikipedia in English (2)
