The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, the Crossing, Cities of the Plain (Everyman's Library)

Average customer rating:

Adventure!

One of the best

Perfect presentation of a perfect story

A five-star book plus a five-star book plus a five-star book equals a fifteen-star book

apologia pro sua vita

The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, the Crossing, Cities of the Plain (Everyman's Library)
Cormac Mccarthy
Manufacturer: Everyman's Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Classics | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
McCarthy, Cormac | ( M ) | Authors, A-Z | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

No Country for Old Men

The Road

Suttree Suttree

The Sunset Limited

ASIN: 0375407936
Release Date: 1999-09-28

Book Description

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Available together in one volume for the first time, the three novels of Cormac McCarthy's award-winning and bestselling Border Trilogy constitute a genuine American epic.

Beginning with All the Pretty Horses and continuing through The Crossing and Cities of the Plain, McCarthy chronicles the lives of two young men coming of age in the Southwest and Mexico, poised on the edge of a world about to change forever. Hauntingly beautiful, filled with sorrow and humor, The Border Trilogy is a masterful elegy for the American frontier.

Customer Reviews:

Adventure!.......2007-01-04

I love All the Pretty Horses and have read it three times. The other stories aren't quite as good as the first in the trilogy but the package is a good value.

One of the best.......2007-01-04

I love a book that takes more than a day to read. I'm still thinking about the characters months after I have read these book(s) Reading a good book twice is something I rarely do, planning a rereading of this one soon.

Perfect presentation of a perfect story.......2006-05-20

Just one example of the prose which has prompted me to read this three times:

PAGE 141 OF "ALL THE PRETTY HORSES" (punctuation is as the author intended)

"...They'd ride at night up along the western mesa two hours from the ranch and sometimes he'd build a fire and they could see the gaslights at the hacienda gates far below them floating in a pool of black and sometimes the lights seemed to move as if the world down there turned on some other center and they saw stars fall to earth by the hundreds and she told him stories of her father's family and of Mexico. Going back they'd walk the horses into the lake and the horses would stand and drink with the water at their chests and the stars in the lake bobbed and tilted where they drank and if it rained in the mountains the air would be close and the night more warm and one night he left her and rode down along the edge of the lake through the sedge and willow and slid from the horses back and pulled off his boots and his clothes and walked out into the lake where the moon slid away before him and ducks gabbled out there in the dark. The water was black and warm and he turned in the lake and spread his arms in the water and the water was so dark and so silky and he watched across the still black surface to where she stood on the shore with the horse and he watched where she stepped from her pooled clothing so pale, so pale, like a chrysalis emerging, and walked into the water.

She paused midway to look back. Standing there trembling in the water and not from the cold for there was none. Do not speak to her. Do not call. When she reached him he held out his hand amd she took it. She was so pale in the lake she seemed to be burning. Like foxfire in a darkened wood. That burned cold. Like the moon that burned cold. Her black hair floating on the water about her, falling and floating on the water. She put her other arm about his shoulder and looked toward the moon in the west do not speak to her do not call and then she turned her face up to him. Sweeter for the larceny of time and flesh, sweeter for the betrayal. Nesting cranes that stood singlefooted among the cane on the south shore had pulled their slender beaks from their wingpits to watch. Me quieres? she said. Yes, he said. He said her name. God yes, he said..."

A five-star book plus a five-star book plus a five-star book equals a fifteen-star book.......2006-04-04

Here are three amazing books, and one amazing saga, all together in one brimming volume you can throw into a backpack.

The first novel, "All the Pretty Horses" is one of the most beautifully told stories I've ever read. Not only is the writing here packed with imagery, and the story one of McCarthy's most accessible, but the textures of the words used to describe the images are as lush and as enfolding as anything F. Scott Fitzgerald ever wrote--even when McCarthy's describing the driest of desert plains, the most desolate of ruins, or the emptiest of lives.
The book tells the story of two young friends who leave home in 1948 Texas to ride south into northern Mexico in search of SOMETHING. What happens along the way is tragic and amusing, lovely and gripping, real and amazing. McCarthy seems to paint every scene perfectly, yet he does so using the fewest amount of words possible, and the simplest of details.
"The gray and malignant dawn." "Stars falling down the long black slope of the firmament." "The shelving clouds." "Their windtattered fire." "Narrow spires of smoke standing vertically into the windless dawn so still the village seemed to hang by threads from the darkness."
Long sentences shroud the reader in the events of every scene, and the author's trademark quote-sign-less dialogue gives every conversation a very biblical feel.

The trilogy's second book, "The Crossing" has only thematic and geographical elements in common with the first. The story deals with a completely different character, Billy Parham, a son in a late-1930s New Mexican ranching family. Billy traps a wolf that has been killing his father's cattle but realizes he morally can't kill it and has to return it to its home in the mountains of old Mexico. Billy crosses the border into Mexico, and as he does he crosses from real life into a world of dreams, where everyone moves as if the air was liquid, where every ruin has an irretrievable story, where soot and heat and danger hang in the air, and where nothing ever goes as planned.
The story is not as streamlined or as focused as its thematic predecessor, "All the Pretty Horses," but that's not necessarily a shortcoming. The book sprawls out like a wide hot desert--curling north and south, east and west, across the present and into the past. The writing is as good as any writing I've ever read ever, and certain metaphors and feelings will stay with you for years. For example: the coals of a campfire seeming like an exposed piece of the core of the earth.

The trilogy's concluding part is "Cities of the Plain." The book has some shortcomings, but it's still one amazing piece of work. YOU try writing something this good.
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. Here, you can see why this actually is a trilogy. Both characters 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.
"Cities of the Plain" tends more heavily toward the lengthy philosophical monologues that appear only occasionally in the trilogy's earlier volumes, and the whole story at moments goes a little bit long if you've just read the two previous books right before.
However, the writing is gorgeous, and haunting. 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. 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 gave me chills of ecstasy. 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.

Reading these collected books is like having a vision: I feel as if I should tell the world about it, but at the same time it seems so sacred and personal that maybe I should just keep it to myself and try to figure out why it came to me, into my life, into my head. These are books that deserve readers. Pick this volume up, and let it seep into your skin, let it open you to other worlds and people and ideas, and let it change you. Let it open your eyes to the world, and to the West, and to the goodness and the hope and the sadness that haunts the lives of all of us.
This is a saga made up of all those ineffable things that most of us just can't put into words. But here, somehow, Cormac McCarthy has managed to do just that. Here is the intangible, but tangible. Here is the unnameable, but named. Here are the thoughts you could never express, expressed. Here is a book worth reading, a book that will change you--you, and the way you see the world.

apologia pro sua vita.......2006-03-23

My names Billy Parham and basically I get everyone killed one way or another for no particular reason. Mostly wrong and never did learn a thing. Is that about right cowboy?
Yeah you covered it nicely.
Boyd?
Like John Grady just said. You nailed it.

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

Average customer rating:

Omit epilogue
Plain Spoken
A fine book
masterpiece of the west...
The Measure of a Man

Cities of the Plain: A Novel (Border Trilogy, Vol. 3)
Cormac McCarthy
Manufacturer: Alfred A. Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0679423907
Release Date: 1998-05-12

Amazon.com

On a ranch in southeastern Texas, soon after World War II, a group of solitary, inarticulately lonely men gathers to work animals as the sun sets for good on the mythic American West. All of these men nurse losses both personal (siblings or wives) and collective (a shared lifestyle and philosophy). Among them is John Grady Cole, the adolescent hero of the first book in Cormac McCarthy's Border trilogy, All the Pretty Horses. John Grady remains the magnificent horseman he always was, and he still dreams too much. On the ranch, he meets Billy Parham, whose own tragic sojourn through Mexico in The Crossing, the second book of the set, continues to quietly suffocate him. The two form a friendship that will nurture both but save neither from the destiny that McCarthy's characters always sense lurching to meet them.

Soaked in storm-heavy atmosphere but brightened by the ranch-hands' easy camaraderie and gentle humor, Cities of the Plain surprises with its sweetness. The awkward doomed-romance plot at the center of this tight, concise novel fails to convince, but, remarkably, does little to undercut the book's impact. What lingers here, and what matters, are the brooding, eerie portraits of the plains and the riders, glimpsed mostly alone but occasionally leaning together, who slip across them, over the horizon into memory. --Glen Hirshberg

Book Description

In this final volume of The Border Trilogy, two men marked by the boyhood adventures of All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing now stand together, in the still point between their vivid pasts and uncertain futures, to confront a country changing or already changed beyond recognition.

In the fall of 1952, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham--nine years apart in age, yet with a kinship greater than perhaps they know--are cowboys on a New Mexico ranch encroached upon from the north, at Alamogordo, by the military. To the south, always on the horizon are the mountains of Mexico, looming over El Paso, Ciudad Juárez and all the cities of the plain.
Bound by nature to horses and cattle and range, these two discover that ranchlife domesticity is compromised, for them and the men they work with, by a geometry of loss afflicting old and young alike, those who have survived it and anyone about to try. And what draws one of them across the border again and again, what would bind "those disparate but fragile worlds," is a girl seized by ill fortune, and a love as dangerous as it is inevitable.

This story of friendship and passion is enfolded in a narrative replete with character and place and event--a blind musician, a marauding pack of dogs, curio shops and ancient petroglyphs, a precocious shoe-shine boy, trail drives from the century before, midnight on the highway--and with landforms and wildlife and horses and men, most of all men and the women they love and mourn, men and their persistence and memories and dreams.

With the terrible beauty of Cities of the Plain--with its magisterial prose, humor both wry and out-right, fierce conviction and unwavering humanity--Cormac McCarthy has completed a landmark of our literature and times, an epic that reaches from tales of the old west, the world past, into the new millennium, the world to come.

Customer Reviews:

Omit epilogue.......2007-09-05

I think the epilogue adds nothing to the novel, unless somehow I missed the point entirely. C. M. has elsewhere more skillfully put forth his theme that our destinies are predetermined practically from the "big bang" and that, appearances to the contrary, we really have no choices. The last thirty pages get to sound like a harangue.

Besides, I would have welcomed a novel about Billy's later life. I love C. M.'s beautifully descriptive language, and the series is ending too quickly for my taste.

Plain Spoken.......2007-07-22

If I'd known this was the third in a trilogy I never would have read it, not having read the other two. Might have been nice of the publisher to have put that somewhere on the cover--front or back--so people who are just browsing the shelves (like me) might have some idea what we're getting into. Just a suggestion.

Anyway, I suppose McCarthy's writing is fine if you enjoy the Hemingway style, which I don't. I'm not sure what's so beautiful about sentences that go "He shaved and showered and toweled off and got dressed." Seems kind of ugly actually. Reminds me of the stories I wrote in junior high. But he has a Pulitzer and a National Book Award and I don't. Take that!

So the conclusion to this supposed trilogy no one bothered to tell me was a trilogy is basically a Western-style "Romeo & Juliet" or "West Side Story" where two kids from opposing sides fall in love. In this case John Grady Cole is a cowboy on a small New Mexico ranch in 1952 and the girl is a 16-year-old Mexican whore. If you know anything about "Romeo & Juliet" you know how this is going to turn out.

A few of the author's style choices left me more than a little confused. Let's go down the list:

1. McCarthy doesn't use quotation marks so sometimes it's hard to know when someone is talking and when McCarthy is narrating.
2. McCarthy is adverse to using proper names so you end up with confusing pronoun use like: "After Oren had gone he sat over his coffee for a long time." Who's "he?" Oren was the last guy referred to but it doesn't make any sense if he left the room to be sitting over his coffee. This is especially a problem when the author starts out a new section or chapter with "He" and then we have to wait a few sentences to figure out the "He" in question.
3. Most aggravating of all is that the girl speaks only Spanish and McCarthy puts her lines IN Spanish. So tough luck if you don't know any Spanish. I wasn't too bad off since I took a few Spanish classes in high school, but some terms still threw me--and I didn't have a Spanish-English dictionary handy. If this were a movie we'd have the benefit of subtitles but in a novel we have to try and interpret the gist of it from the character's actions, sort of like playing charades.

I suppose that would have been fine for the unimportant characters, but a character central to the plot I sort of like to know what she's saying. Imagine if you were reading "Romeo & Juliet" and Juliet made all those romantic speeches to Romeo in Klingon? It just wouldn't have quite the same impact.

Another thing that bothered me is the characters are all so opaque. We never get inside their heads, so it's almost like a movie or TV show. The advantage of novels versus those mediums is that in a novel you can get inside the minds of the characters to see what makes them tick. Maybe since this was the conclusion of a trilogy the author figured he'd covered all that background already. But really I might as well have just popped in a DVD of "Unforgiven" or "Open Range" or something like that.

It's not all bad, though. Though I really can't substantiate it McCarthy seems to have a good eye for the period details. And there's some nice rapport between the cowboys that makes for good dialog. So at least it's not a boring read, except for the 30-page epilogue 50 years in the future that's mostly some old unnamed guy rambling on about dreams. I'm not sure what the point of that was.

Anyway, I suppose if you've read the other books in this supposed trilogy you'd be a lot better off than me.

That is all.

A fine book.......2007-06-20

This novel concludes the Border Trilogy. It follows protagonists from "All the Pretty Horses" and "The Crossings" through a final epoch. John Grady falls in love with an epileptic prostitute in Mexico and the men go down to try to rescue her. Grady intends to marry her.

This was the least interesting of the three books. McCarthy documents the day-to-day life of a ranching culture fast dieing out. Most of the dialogue lacks the brilliance of the previous books. Many of the scenes and much of the dialogue are simple give and take, with little revelation or philosophy. The epilogue is the exception. A brilliant conversation, falling in and out of reality, probing the meaning of death and purpose of life, takes place between an aged Billy Parham and a stranger. This final chapter is classic McCarthy.

Unlike the other books, which can be read on their own, much of the gravity of this book relies on previous books. The book would have little meaning to the reader who did not read the previous works. And this perhaps takes something away from the work itself, though I don't know how one could conclude a trilogy without falling back on the previous works.

But there is something else that the book lacks. It meanders for the first 150 pages, seemingly without purpose. John Grady is in love with a prostitute, the army is buying up ranch land, a way of life is dieing out.... The other books begin with a very clear direction, and though that direction shifts, there is always a strong sense of purpose to the narrative. The characters are driven and their actions and dialogue are inspired. There is tension. "Cities" falls short of that expectation. It is not a bad book, but it is not nearly as good as the others.

So much of the book is written in Spanish. There are entire paragraphs of conversation. McCarthy offer no explanation or restatement. I don't know what it would be like to read the book and not be able to read the conversations. I suspect that it would be annoying. But as a reader who can follow both conversations, the use of the Spanish seems authentic and almost expected.

masterpiece of the west..........2007-05-09

be sure to read ALL THE PRETTY HORSES and THE CROSSING before jumping into the third of this trilogy by Cormac McCarthy..it brings you John Grady Cole from PRETTY HORSES and Billy Parham from THE CROSSING..working as ranch hands in New Mexico..their life consists of trail drives, horse auctions and stories by the campfire...their lives change forever when John falls in love with a Mexican prostitute..Billy agrees to help resuce her and the ensuing events told in the masterful words of Cormac McCarthy make for a classic story that will stay with you for a long time..

The Measure of a Man.......2006-10-03

About 20 years ago, I bemoaned the lack of heroes in our society. The "anti-heroes", the good-bad guys had taken over and there were only the ones you love to hate in the spotlight. Cormack McCarthy wrote the first volume of his trilogy around the same time and I found some of the heroes I'd been looking for. McCarthy hasn't created his cowboy heroes, he communicated or maybe "channeled" them. It really seems to me that like some of the ancient storytellers, he serves as a medium for the ancient voices. That is not meant to minimize Mr. McCarthy's talent. No-one has been more successful as he in capturing the language and personalities of real cowboys.
"Cowboy" is more than a little ambiguous in our language. Some use the word to describe those who would take advantage of opportunities to scratch advantage from others without regard to conventional ethics or morality but for me and others, it suggests the rugged individualist who follows his own path, his own code, in the pursuit of his goals.
Maybe there's no place for cowboys in our current society and maybe that's too bad

Average customer rating:

Turning point
Too much Spanish!
Another Great Book from McCarthy
McCarthy proves that he does humorous as well as grim - a review of "The Crossing"
stark, desperate country

The Crossing (Border Trilogy, Vol 2)
Cormac Mccarthy
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0394574753
Release Date: 1994-06-07

Amazon.com

The opening section of The Crossing, book two of the Border Trilogy, features perhaps the most perfectly realized storytelling of Cormac McCarthy's celebrated career. Like All the Pretty Horses, this volume opens with a teenager's decision to slip away from his family's ranch into Mexico. In this case, the boy is Billy Parham, and the catalyst for his trip is a wolf he and his father have trapped, but that Billy finds himself unwilling to shoot. His plan is to set the animal loose down south instead.

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

Book Description

Following All the Pretty Horses in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy is a novel whose force of language is matched only by its breadth of experience and depth of thought.

In the bootheel of New Mexico hard on the frontier, Billy and Boyd Parham are just boys in the years before the Second World War, but on the cusp of unimaginable events. First comes a trespassing Indian and the dream of wolves running wild amongst the cattle lately brought onto the plain by settlers -- this when all the wisdom of trappers has disappeared along with the trappers themselves. And so Billy sets forth at the age of sixteen on an unwitting journey into the souls of boys and animals and men. Having trapped a she-wolf he would restore to the mountains of Mexico, he is long gone and returns to find everything he left behind transformed utterly in his absence. Except his kid brother, Boyd, with whom he strikes out yet again to reclaim what is theirs thus crossing into "that antique gaze from whence there could be no way back forever."

An essential novel by any measure, The Crossing is luminous and appalling, a book that touches, stops, and starts the heart and mind at once.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews:

Turning point.......2007-10-01

The Crossing is so vividly written that you can smell the southwestern landscape and hear the haunting romance of the cantigas. If you have travel plans to Mexico, however, the tale is enough to make you think twice about going there.

I found the Spanish challenging, although it is simple. I still needed my Spanish-English dictionary, and felt sad about missing the author's point when my literal translations failed. The long passages of Mexican metaphysics were tiring at times because I lost the metaphor. Still, the relationship between the brothers Billy and Boyd was compelling.

It's hard to imagine the starkness of their home, their clothing, food, possessions, comforts and their prose--sometimes I laughed out loud at their dialogue. It makes me want to talk in cowboy language. Billy's plans always seemed to go awry, but he toughed through all kinds of adversities with a simple "tell the truth" philosophy.

The Crossing is not about the borders between Mexico and the US, but it is about boundaries--the boundaries that are within our psychologies--how we define them and how we manage them. It is about how memory creates myth and archetypes. It is about how our impressions of the past often frame our futures.

Reading this author is a real treat--you won't be disappointed. It's such a joy to read his prose.

Too much Spanish!.......2007-09-13

I looked forward to reading this book, since I considered "The Road" great and really enjoyed the breath taking description in"All the Pretty Horses"and "Cities of the Plain." However, I am so disappointed in "The Crossing" I doubt that I will even finish reading it.
A major complaint is that there is way too much Spanish. I early on stopped even trying to decipher the meaning and just skipped those passages, which are very numerous and sometimes a paragraph or two in length. What is probably an attempt to provide local color becomes merely irritating for those who do not know Spanish. (And I've yet to figure out what Mr. McCarthy has against punctuation.)
The interminable mountains and rivers which, after all, cannot differ much from each other, get pretty tedious after a while, too. As do the stories and philosophizing from people met on the journey. After a couple hundred pages, my feeling is let's get on with it! ( It being the saga of Billy and Boyd.)

Another Great Book from McCarthy.......2007-06-20

I confess that I am consistently impressed with McCarthy. Though "The Crossing" is not as robust as "All the Pretty Horses" nor as unique a literary experience as "Blood Meridian," it remains a heck of a good book.

In this novel there is perhaps less philosophy, fewer long, rhapsodic monologues exploring the inner lives and motivations of characters. There is more action, and that action leads to no less troubling places. The monologues are replaced to a certain degree with story. Within the narrative there are several smaller narratives told by lesser characters. Though these stories lack any sort of succinct moral, they none the less contain a certain resonant truth within the world of the novel.

The larger work and the shorter stories within that work all circle the idea of truth. The novel opens with the journey of Billy Parham. He captures a pregnant wolf and then attempts to bring the wolf back across the boarder into the mountains of Mexico. In this way, the narrative begins on familiar ground. One thinks of other journey stories, one also thinks of American wilderness stories (White Fang, Call of the Wild). But soon this journey story goes awry, and the narrative we expect turns in unforeseeable directions.

One of the things I find most remarkable about this particular novel and other McCarthy work is his courage. He sets the narrative in motion. He sets a fair path and direction. He lays the groundwork, and then, once things have been set into motion, he leaves the path he has established. Like one of his characters, he strikes off into the wilderness, he crosses roadless country on horseback trusting in the things and the people he meets.

I am not sure if I am making much sense. I am thinking specifically of how this book began as a story about a boy who seeks to return a wolf, how that in itself could have been enough. But once that narrative track is established, McCarthy shifts the focus, he sets the boy off on a journey without direction or purpose, he returns the boy to a home that no longer exists, and then sets the boy off again on a journey that proves as misdirected and pointless as the first. Each time the character sets out on a track or narrative path, McCarthy soon erases the path and we are left to wander for a time in a narrative wilderness.

The narrative is given its form through theme and character. When the plot does emerge, it quickly dissolves. Nothing turns out as one would imagine. There is no foreshadowing or similar such devices. It is just character and layered narrative. Desire and thwarted desire. It seems to be exactly what I want to be reading right now.

McCarthy proves that he does humorous as well as grim - a review of "The Crossing".......2007-05-20

Well what can I say. More brilliant writing by a master AND for the first time I found myself laughing -a lot- while reading a McCarthy book. I know you might not believe me, but truly there are some extremely funny bits in this story. [My husband kept looking at me wondering if perhaps I had slipped the dusk jack for "The Crossing" onto another book. ]

And alas, lest you wonder, McCarthy was just leading me on. Up, up he took me. Wonderful story (expected). Humor (okay, not expected). But I was laughing and soaring and I was beginning to wonder if this book might be wildly different from the others. Certainly neither "The Road", nor "Blood Meridian" had me cackling: those were all grim fare. But rest assured. As high as McCarthy took me, that was where he dropped me from. It was a long plummet but finally I was back on familiar territory... heart torn out... feelings wrenched and twisted.

Five Stars. "The Crossing" is a McCarthy story that should make you laugh and then cry. Simply a wonderful tale with characters to care about. Exquisite prose.

stark, desperate country.......2007-05-09

once you are hooked on Cormac McCarthy's world of a desperate, stark west there's no going back..sort of like his characters..Billy Parham is innocent enough to believe he can set a captured wolf back in the mountains of Mexico but his journey there dispels him of that innocence and the people he meets along the way..he grows up like we all do..maybe disillusioned, a bit bitter and angry..but the lyrical prose of Cormac McCarthy makes the journey all worth it.

Border Crossings: American Interactions With Israelis (Interact Series)

Average customer rating:

right on target!
An important book.

Border Crossings: American Interactions With Israelis (Interact Series)
Lucy, Shahar , and David, Kurz
Manufacturer: Intercultural Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Israel | Middle East | History | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Business Travel | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books

General | Travel | Subjects | Books

Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Travel Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Passport Israel: Your Pocket Guide to Israeli Business, Customs & Etiquette (Passport to the World) (Passport to the World)

ASIN: 1877864315

Book Description

Border Crossing's goal is to provide the reader with a conceptual understanding of Israeli culture and a repertoire of strategies for dealing with American-Israeli cultural differences. The authors serve as cultural translators, interpreting local norms and behavior patterns. As they report on the cultural landscape, they bring elements of the Israeli character into sharper focus by identifying those elements without reducing them to oversimplifications or stereotypes.

Customer Reviews:

right on target!.......2000-02-03

I work in a multinational company and am in daily contact with colleagues and clients abroad. They come from r&d, marketing and sales. When I read the book, everything clicked. All of a sudden, I understood why problems dealing with contracts, managing time and solving conflicts had arisen in the past. "Border Crossings" also gave me some good ideas about how to solve intercultural conflicts. When I first started out, I needed a dictionary to understand the language. Now that I understand the language, I need a cultural interpreter to figure out what the words and behavior really mean. "Border Crossings" is my interpreter.

An important book........1998-01-05

Anyone in either Israel or the US that is interested in working with a factor from the other country cannot afford not to read this book. It has nothing to do with intuition or intelligence - the differences can only be learned, either through tiresome and costly experience or through reading Border Crossings.

Average customer rating:

excellent job - format may be improved
Psychological thriller
Two person play as a novel
"Regeneration" revamped
Surprising page-turner!

Border Crossing: A Novel
Pat Barker
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Psychological & Suspense | Thrillers | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Mystery & Thriller Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0312420196

Book Description

Out walking with his wife, Lauren, beside the river Tyne, Tom Seymour instinctively risks his life to save a young man who they happen to notice just before he jumps into the icy current. Tom's spontaneous act saves the life of someone whose past, as well as his future, he feels a sense of responsibility towards. Recently released from prison, and living under an assumed name, Danny Miller was tried for murder as a ten-year-old on the basis of Tom's testimony, and assessment of him as a psychologist and an expert witness. When Danny asks Tom to help him sort out his life—beginning with his past—Tom is drawn into a lonely, soul-searching reinvestigation of the child murderer's case.

Download Description

From the Booker Prize-winning author of the *Regeneration* trilogy comes a probing, suspenseful portrait of a pyschologist entranced by his subject: a young man who has grown up guilty of murder.

Customer Reviews:

excellent job - format may be improved.......2007-04-08

I have loved this engrossing novel ever since reading the book one year ago (hurrah for Pat Barker). The audiobook format offers new possibilities of enjoying it when hands are busy but brains are not. And, of course James Wilby's voice adds a lot of pleasure. I was going to give it 5 stars, but the only thing spoiling the picture is the audiocassette format - a CD would have been easier to use.

Psychological thriller.......2004-10-03

The only other Pat Barker novels I've read were those of the Regeneration trilogy, and it's easy to recognize her style in "Border Crossing", once again the reader is taken into the intimate relationship between a psychologist and his patient. This one does not have the same scope as the trilogy, really just a novella or extra long short story with only 216 pages, a page turning psychological thriller that's easy to read in a night..

One day while walking by a river Tom witnesses an accident and rescues a man from drowning. Coincidentally this man turns out to be Danny, a child murderer now released who once was evaluated by Tom to judge if he was fit to stand trial in an adult court. Tom decides to begin therapy sessions with Danny to help him understand his past, and more questions are raised than answered. Readers that like nice clear cut endings might be disappointed with this, what is good and what is evil are very ambiguous in this story; and certainly will give pause for thought about child criminals, especially children who kill.

I gave this a 4 star rating because of the plot line involving his wife - while interesting this was somewhat disconnected from the story. The ending has been left wide open for a sequel and I wouldn't mind hearing what becomes of Danny Miller.

Two person play as a novel.......2004-05-27

I will admit that I listened to this Audio Book on drive to and from Las Angeles to Los Vegas. I thought it a good chance to be introduced to Pat Barker who seems to get such rave reviews. This is basically a two person character study in the guise of a psychological thriller that is not all that thrilling. I found the store interesting enough and the writing crisp, but the
secondary plot of Tom Seymour and his wife seems lost as she walks out of his life just when he is consumed with this former child patient who returns to extract his revenge. Or does he? I will give this a marginal thumbs up because the two main characters are well written and vivid, with Danny Miller the tormented child murderer an excellent character. But in the end I did not find this very satisfying to listen to and doubt I would have finished it if I had picked it up as a book.

"Regeneration" revamped.......2004-03-08

When child psychologist Tom Seymour pulls a would-be suicide from a river, he recognises the young man as Danny Miller, the child whom Tom's assessment had helped imprison for the brutal murder of an old woman thirteen years ago. Now out of prison and supposedly starting a new life, Danny has hunted Tom down in the hope that he might be able to help him understand the killing. With his own life troubled and his marriage collapsing, Tom succumbs to the temptation to travel into Danny's past.

The problem is that what he finds there is not particularly riveting, and certainly not unusual enough to account for an act which society regards with horror as completely beyond the boundaries of "normality". Unlike, say, Peter Shaffer's "Equus", when Danny finally remembers the murder there is little depth, no sense of climax, no sense of a mystery unravelled, not even much horror. The novel sets up the idea of a journey into the mind of an outcast, the child who kills, but never lives up to what it promises.

The second problem is the characterisation. Danny Miller is a pale reworking of Billy Prior, Barker's brilliant creation in "Regeneration", complete with Prior's unpleasant father, manipulative charm and "wintry smile", but nowhere near as interesting (especially once you recognise him as Prior). Tom isn't even a shadow of "Regeneration"'s Dr Rivers, and there is even less substance to the supporting cast, his wife, his colleagues, and the people whose lives Danny has passed through. Although there are hints that there will be trouble between Tom and Danny, since Danny seems to blame Tom for his imprisonment and is renowned for getting people who deal with him to "cross the invisible line", the relationship barely develops, again being a lack-lustre echo of the intense but still professional relationship between Rivers and Prior.

Barker is capable of extraordinary writing, as evidenced in her superb "Regeneration" trilogy, a remarkable exploration of people who kill and what it does to their psyches. It's a pity that she seems to have been rewriting it ever since.

Surprising page-turner!.......2004-03-07

Pat Barker has won many awards for her fiction & here it's easy to see why. It's the story of a psychiatrist who accidentally meets a young man he once evaluated...evaluated to say whether he could stand trial. The patient has grown up and wants to talk about his childhood. Meanwhile, the therapist's personal life is falling to pieces. American bestsellers in the genre of your choice are fun reads. Reading a book by an excellent storyteller and writer like Barker points up just how flimsy, vapid, and bland many of those NYT bestsellers are. She has an amazing facillity with language and story construction. Her World War 2 "Regeneration" trilogy won all the awards and got press (mostly in Britain) but try this page turner or "Blow Your House Down." I had to read the latter in one sitting!

Crossing Borders: Reception Theory, Poststructuralism, Deconstruction

Average customer rating:

Crossing Borders: Reception Theory, Poststructuralism, Deconstruction
Robert C. Holub
Manufacturer: University of Wisconsin Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books

History of Ideas | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

Look Inside History Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Reference Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
ASIN: 0299132706

Average customer rating:

An intriguing plot

Crossing Borders
S.D. Curtis
Manufacturer: BookSurge Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Happiness | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 141965229X
Release Date: 2006-11-16

Book Description

Caroline Winslow is a graduate in Economics, who has so far failed to fulfill her potential: to the shock of friends and family she was convicted of shoplifting the day before her final exams. Seemingly happy to 'sit out' her own life, she finds a menial job in a small export firm in London. But fate has in mind other plans for Caroline, and within a few short months she is involved in a passionate affair with an immigrant doctor from Romania and on her way to becoming an unwilling accomplice in a dangerous game. Unexpectedly invited on a business trip to Romania by her boss, Jennifer, the action takes us to that part of Europe still painfully emerging from the grip of Communism. It is here that the tables start to turn, and an innocent trip motivated by personal curiosity starts to become something sinister. While the relationship with her boss and a travel companion has an acceptably professional tone at the beginning of the journey, Caroline increasingly finds herself in the position of subordinate. Unexpectedly, Jennifer takes on a much more dominant, and eventually menacing role. Although a number of unexplained anomalies create a sense of disaster about to happen, Caroline starts to play an internal game of denial against her own instincts: not trusting herself enough to admit her own fears and not quite brave enough to confront Jennifer out-right. 'Crossing Borders' is a novel about how an ordinary girl can be unwittingly led to disaster when the weaknesses of her own character are so cunningly manipulated by another. It is also a story about the desire to be loved and the difficult choices we must make in life. In order to keep the man she loves, Caroline must cross not only the physical and cultural borders which separate countries and peoples; she must traverse the territories of fear and human weakness.

Customer Reviews:

An intriguing plot.......2007-04-12

I can really recommend Crossing Borders, and I thank Suzi Curtis for the great entertainment that Caroline Winslow's adventures provided to me, sometimes making me wonder which parts were based on the author's personal experience! It made fascinating reading, perhaps more so as I have spent some time in Rumania and have lived in Central Europe for several years and thus understand some of the issues revealed in the book.

Without wishing to spoil the surprise for others, I became very involved in the book as the plot unfolded. In fact so engrossed that I found I couldn't put it down, reading Crossing Borders cover to cover in one sitting, as it very much brightened up a dull winter's day whilst I was crossing the Bay of Biscay on a ferry.

Mestizo Democracy: The Politics of Crossing Borders (Borderlands Culture and Traditions)

Average customer rating:

Mestizo Democracy: The Politics of Crossing Borders (Borderlands Culture and Traditions)
John Francis Burke
Manufacturer: Texas A&M University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Democracy | Government | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 1585443468

Book Description

It can come as no surprise that the ethnic makeup of the American population is rapidly changing. In this volume, John Francis Burke offers a mestizo theory of democracy and traces its implications for public policy.

Mestizo, meaning "mixture," is a term from the Mexican socio-political experience that represents a blend of indigenous, African, and Spanish genes and cultures in Latin America in which the influences of these cultures remain identifiable but interact with each other in dynamic ways.

Book Description

Illegal Alphabets and Adult Biliteracy--based on four years of intensive fieldwork in a small rural community in Southern Illinois--is a landmark work in the area of adult literacy, combining insights from linguistics, anthropology, literacy studies, and education in a culturally situated exploration of the language and literacy practices of migrant workers. As such, it is a substantive contribution to the linguistic study of indigenous literacies; to sociocultural approaches to language, learning, and literacy; and to ethnographic and critical approaches to education.

The book begins with a true story about "illegal aliens" who, in the summer of 1980, in the town of Cobden, Illinois, decided to help each other write down English como de veras se oye--the way it really sounds. The focus is on why and how they did this, what they actually wrote down, and what happened to their texts. The narrative then shifts to how and why the strategies adult immigrants actually use in order to cope with English in the real world seem to have little in common with those used by students in publicly funded bilingual and ESL classrooms. The book concludes with a discussion of the ideal of a universal alphabet, about the utopian claim that anyone can use a canonical set of 26 letters to reduce to script any language, ever spoken by anyone, anywhere, at any time. This claim is so familiar that it is easy to overlook how much undocumented intellectual labor was invested over the centuries by those who successfully carried the alphabet across the border from one language to the next. From this undocumented labor, without which none of us would now be able to read, everyone profits.

To make his story and his argument as accessible as possible, Kalmar steers clear of jargon and excessive technical terminology. At the same time, however, readers who are familiar with any of the current postmodern discourses on the social construction of symbolic forms will be able to bring such discourses to bear on what he has to say about the game, the discourse, and the scene of writing that constitute the focus of his theoretical analysis.

When people today argue about "illegal aliens" in the United States, probably the last question on their minds is the one to which this book is devoted: how do "illegal aliens" use an alphabet they already know in order to chart the speech sounds of colloquial English? It is the author's hope that readers will interpret his story as a parable with serious political implications. Illegal Alphabets and Adult Biliteracy is a compelling, vitally relevant book for researchers, students, practitioners, and anyone else interested in language and literacy in social, cultural, and political contexts, including bilingual and ESL education, second-language acquisition and development, applied and sociolinguistics, multicultural education, educational anthropology, and qualitative research.

Customer Reviews:

Great Linguistic scholarship that's also fun reading!.......2003-12-11

I was impressed with this book not only because of Tomas Kalmar's clear mastery of the topic and knowledge of linguistics but also because of how flat out fun the book was to read: engaging and to the point, this book takes a serious look at what it's like to be a migrant worker in the US, struggling with language barriers and discrimination and highlights the strength of the Latino community. Because of the detailed linguistic content, I'm using it for a coursebook next semester. Because it's a fine read, I'm giving it as a gift to nonlinguist friends. BTW: if you happen to be English/Spanish bilingual, there are some very funny bits!

Passionate Scholarship.......2003-06-09

Tomás Kalmar's book is a charming combination of personal experience and erudite scholarship, written in an engaging fashion. The author's treatment of the politics of biliteracy, from the fruit-groves of the Midwest to the halls of academe, is both passionate and clear-sighted. The alert reader will also enjoy observing evidence of Kalmar's wide-ranging interests threading through the fabric of the book, notably his fondness for music and his fascination with mathematical and proto-mathematical thinking.

...English, como de veras se oye..........2003-05-30

Allá para el verano de 1980, en el pueblo de Cobden, Illinois, los wetbacks would pick fruit at a blistering pace, pero sus patronos se mantenían suficientemente distanciados para no crear revuelos. Everyone knew que los indocumentados rendered an invaluable service to the economic stability of the fruit-pickers market, pero el zumbido tenue-yet constant-que se generaba no dejaba de ser escudriñado by those who wanted to mend the suffering and injustice. Era necesario romper la barrera del silencio. Había que legitimizar the apparent reticence among migrant mexican workers dándoles herramientas para decodificar the seeminlgy impenetrable, iron-clad English language. El inglés, entreched in legalese and exuding una supuesta legitimidad inquebrantable, trataba de silenciar al arrullo de un español de carne y hueso que día a día clamaba por su supervivencia.
Tomás Mario Kalmar, académico, músico, historiador y maestro, documenta, con suceptibilidd y tacto, what unfolded en aquellas reuniones clandestinas where two monolingual communities redescubrían la verdadera diferencia entre el abecedario y la alfabetización. Uno de los estudiantes congregados in the dimly lit basement rompió el hielo de la primera sesión al declarar que los sonidos de un alfabeto no necesáriamente tenían que corresponder con los caracetres. Había que razonar: even though English and Spanish share the same alphabet (con la excepción de la ll y la ñ), both adhere to pronunciation keys that are radically different. Bajo la tutela de Kalmar, a new language emerged. Entre lo correcto y lo incorrecto, between the sound and the written text, una comunidad de estudiantes y maestros began to write English como de veras se oía. Hence, the Cobden Glossaries emerged líricamente. Nació, luego de interminables noches de juego y debate, un tomo lírico, suntuoso, complejo, sinewy, yet veritable, dónde la palabra juellulib nestled una verdad tan significante y legítima como la oración where do you live.

The silences que Kalmar interpreta in his manifesto son aquellos silencios que dejan atrás lo clandestino para sumergirse en lo legítimo. The migrant workers yearned for legitimacy. En esa mesa redonda in which students and teachers investigaban diversos modos de encaminarse a la comunicación, existió the possibility that silence would be pricked and made to transform itself into something dynamic and resilient, en algo que puediese reintegrar y redefinir a la comunidad.

Average customer rating:
Jackson Heights Chronicles: When Crossing the Border Isn't Enough
Orlando Tobon
Manufacturer: Atria
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Emigration & Immigration | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
General | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Minority Studies | Special Groups | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Drug Delivery Systems | Pharmacology | Medical | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Las crónicas de Jackson Heights (Jackson Heights Chronicles): Cuando no basta cruzar la frontera (When Crossing the Border Isn't Enough)

ASIN: 0743286588

Book Description

From his small travel agency tucked away in an area of New York City known as Little Colombia, the "Godfather of Jackson Heights" does far more than make travel arrangements. Fernando Padrón is a social service fixer to many of the tens of thousands of Latino immigrants living in his neighborhood. Tax accountant, job hunter, fund-raiser, and missing persons detective are just some of his roles. Fernando also earned the title of Undertaker for the Mules after helping families repatriate the remains of the dozens who die every year smuggling drugs into New York when drug-filled capsules in their stomachs explode. The riveting experiences shared in this collection of connected stories are based on the author's life. In scenes at once fascinating, inspiring, and heartbreaking, Orlando Tobón reveals not only what it means to be an immigrant, but also what it means to be an American.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books