All the Pretty Horses

McCarthy is the master of description and dialogue. All the Pretty Horses takes you on an incredible journey with a young man and his best friend seeking escape and adventure and a new life abroad only to find all those things and far more than they bargained for.

This is a coming of age story in a sense, a story of a boy searching for a purpose in a world where the life he knew was just turned upside down.

The story is fantastic. The pacing is perfect. The writing though is what sets this apart. The writing is superb. Some of the best stuff I have ever read.

”[. . .] they smelled of smoke and tallow and sweat and they looked as wild and strange as the country they were in.”

Yes. Yes, they did. McCarthy writes poetry on every page. There is no author in recent memory that can paint a picture, paint a mood, like McCarthy. This particular quote captures the texture of the story. For all your aspiring writers out there. This is masterclass stuff.