Boys as impetuous as horses

A frontier is an usual stage for adventures. It's a line which separates two worlds and this is ideal for stories involving changes. Two teenagers cross the border between Texas and Mexico in 1949 in All the Pretty Horses (1992), a novel by Cormac McCarthy. This is a tale about becoming an adult and finding out that life is full of injustice.

John Grady Cole (16) and Lacey Rawlins (17) escape from their town riding horses and they intend to work as cowboys in Mexico. They are friends and they don't need many words to understand each other. On their way they meet a young boy, Jimmy Blevins, who gets easily into trouble. But the greatest problem comes when John falls in love with the wrong person.

All the Pretty Horses is a honest tale: characters' feelings aren't sweetened. The two friends, who behave like adult men, don't show affection but a strong loyalty. Romantic tension between John and a young Mexican girl named Alejandra is just pressing need.

Apart from John, the other star of the novel are horses. Cormac McCarthy devotes many lines to praise the impetuosity of these animals and to explain how to break them. Characters are fascinated with horses and they risk their own safety only to look after them.

Desert-like landscapes are described in a lyrical and raw way, they show how little is the human being in an unfriendly topography. Writing style has no tricks, it only tells facts, and dialogues are curt, but clear enough to understand characters' attitude.

I think that All the Pretty Horses is an excellent coming-of-age novel, with a young main character who doesn't find his place. The harshness of dialogues, characters and sceneries pervades the book with fatalism. However, horses can symbolize kids' energy and beauty, something it's worth fighting for.

All the Pretty Horses (1992), by Cormac McCarthy (Rhode Island, USA, 1933). I've read this novel in Spanish, the edition published in Spain in 2011 by Debolsillo.

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