Monday, June 27, 2022

The border trilogy - Cormac McCarthy

 
You might not know Cormac McCarthy but you probably know some of his stories. Famous movies have been made based on some of his novels: “No country for old men”, “The road” and “All the pretty horses”.
The last one is part of the trilogy I’m talking about here. The other two books of the series are “The crossing” and “Cities of the plain”.
The stories are all based across the border between the US and Mexico. Parts of the dialogs are in Spanish. The stories are set between the 40s and the 50s of the twentieth century and some of the characters are old enough to remember the Mexican revolution.
The main characters are young cowboys: simple, honest and uncompromising people. They’d do anything to stick to their values, what they were taught and what they think is right. They fall in love, complicated stories, risky relationships. They are ready to pay the price for that, and they do, even if the price is their own life.
John Grady Cole is the protagonist of the first book. He is, of course, a master of horse breeding, and he falls in love with the daughter of a Mexican rancher. Bill Parham is the protagonist of “The crossing”, where his brother falls in love with a poor Mexican girl. Both of them are the protagonists of the third book, where John falls in love again with a Mexican girl, a sex slave this time, with whom her pimp is in love as well.
A blend of Western and tragic romanticism: if you fancy the genre this is great literature.

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