Cities of the Plain
by Cormac McCarthy
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Book Summary Information
Author: Cormac McCarthyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1999-05-25
ISBN: 0679747192
Number of pages: 292
Publisher: Vintage International
Book Reviews of Cities of the Plain
Book Review: Great language, not necessarily great story
Summary: 3 Stars
I read this final volume of the "Border Trilogy" because I had read the first two. I was massively disappointed with the plot. It is far more pessimistic and dark than the first two volumes, and can leave the reader depressed. Yes, indeed, the language is as outstanding as ever, and one can hear the authentic speech of people in the particular place and time, but personally, I found that to be another reason to find the plot depressing: the more you feel for the characters, the more you want them to come out of the story at least somewhat intact.
All I can say without giving away too much is that those of us who feel compelled to finish this set of books need to get ready for a serious downer.
Summary of Cities of the Plain
In this magnificent novel, the National Book Award-winning author of "All the Pretty Horses" fashions a darkly beautiful elegy for the American frontier. The setting is New Mexico in 1952, where ranch hands John Grady Cole and Billy Parham become ensnared in events resonating with the violence and inevitability of classic tragedy.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
McCarthy, Cormac Books
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