The Border Trilogy – Part 3 of 3In this final novel of The Border Trilogy, both John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are working at Mac Ranch, owned by a fellow named McGovern. Everyone calls him Mac, and all the cowboys on the ranch know that their time together appears to be limited as the government plans to take over huge tracts of land in the area, including Mac Ranch.John Grady is now 19 and Billy is 28. They have become good friends through sharing their stories of Mexico and working together...

I met Cormac McCarthy and he transcribed our conversation about Cities of the Plain:The author asked, Whad'ya think about the book? The last in the trilogy?That's it. It was alright, Jason said.What was alright?Cities of the PlainWhat specifically?The simple language and the economy of words and the lack of punctuation, quotations especially. How you made simple things like chores seem interesting and wonderful.That's fair. It's actually harder to write like that than you think.I bet.Was it bett...

A man was coming down the road driving a donkey piled high with firewood. In the distance the church bells had begun. The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of the claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transiencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one.Cormac McCarthy brings The Border Trilogy to a stunning conclus...

King of Campfire Philosophy. If you consider Cormac McCarthy novels from All the Pretty Horses to The Road/No Country for Old Men, Cities of the Plain is less violent but much more lyrical. It is a tad less fantastic and a speck more real in that literary realm. & the cities of El Paso and Juarez (Tale of Two Cities much?) are given an aptly lovely (though no less blood drenched) valentine in the form of the strong brotherhood between the ranchers and manly cowboys. That "he" is used in place of...

Cities of the Plain was the final book in The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy and what a beautiful conclusion to this literary tribute to the American West. I have just been swept away with the gorgeous prose and breadth and scope of these unforgettable books with such compelling stories. This third book brings back together the characters of John Grady Cole and Billy Parham from the first and second books of the trilogy, All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing. It is in these two central figur...

The Border Trilogy finale, the ending--at least *an* ending.I greatly enjoyed Cities of the Plain. The book was much more dialogue-driven than the previous two--moreso than most McCarthy. It read quite like a screenplay (honestly I'm surprised there's no adaptation in the works--no Matt Damon please). Landscape descriptions, landscape as a character itself, is toned down, replaced with scene and scenario, the near-exciting humdrum of cowboy ranching life, a moribund profession and way of life. B...

Second Reading: January 2017If All the Pretty Horses is a story about life happening without any way of stopping it, then Cities of the Plain is its perfect counterweight. This is a beautiful raw-earth story about forging ahead with one's dreams in spite of challenges and difficulties. And only a character such as John Grady Cole, who had to accept so much of life in his first appearance in All the Pretty Horses, could have the courage and kindness necessary to push through life in this second a...

This series was pretty hit or miss for me. I loved the first book, All the Pretty Horses, and then somewhat enjoyed book two, The Crossing. Similarly, this one had parts I enjoyed and other parts I found to drag a bit. It didn't have the same emotional depth that I felt the previous books had, but it also had more action and exciting elements than book two. I'd say at least read the first book because it's a great story.

Really sad to finish this trilogy. It's beautiful through and through.

A Real Cowboy Never Sells His HorseBilly, from “The Crossing,’ is older now and is working on a ranch in Southeastern New Mexico. The year is 1952. John Grady, a character from maybe “All the Pretty Horses,” is there too. Ranch work can be interesting, that is, if you only talk about the interesting aspects of it. The stories I heard in Creston, CA, a very small cow town, were always interesting,. If they weren’t, they would not have been told. In this McCarthy book, interesting doesn’t matter,

A definite star rating for this would be 3.5. This is because there are parts of this book I loved and others that I didn't. This is the story of John Grady and his friend Billy. Two cowboys working in country Texas at the borderarea with Mexico. As the title of this book alludes to the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Juarez, is the Mexican town where American cowboys go for drink and "excitement". It is during one of such trips that John Grady falls in love with a girl human trafficke...

A heartbreaking end to this gritty, beautiful series, and an ending that fittingly earns a tip of the hat. While Cormac McCarthy took more of a dialogue-focused approach in this novel, the atmospheric prose and events drawn upon from the preceding books brought all of the elements together in a mesmerizing and powerful way. As the final moments unfolded, I was still in awe of how enthralled I had become with the world McCarthy had created in his subtle and poetic manner, and how empty part of me...

Video reviewThe Border Trilogy combines great literary nourishment of the most wholesome kind (interesting characters living extraordinary lives) with lofty reflections and a great sense of awe. With this in mind, Cities - as the book that ties the first two together - is everything we as readers had a right to expect.

This has been one hell of a winter of McCarthy for me. Starting in early January I began his award-winning Border Trilogy with much trepidation. Having previously only read his Pulitzer-winning father-son dystopian nightmare, The Road, and found it severely lacking, I was curious to see if McCarthy's previous works were worthy of the acclaim in which they are held. After three weeks of being immersed in one of the most bleak interpretations of humanity and exposure to tragedy that would make eve...

This is the third book in McCarthy’s Border Trilogy. While the first two, All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing, can be read in either order, this one should come last. It brings together the protagonists of the first two novels, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham. It is set in the early 1950’s in the plains around El Paso, Texas and across the border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The plot revolves around John Grady’s romantic interest in Magdalena, a sixteen-year-old Mexican prostitute. Nineteen-ye...

- A man is always right to pursue the thing he loves. - No matter even if it kills him?- I think so. Yes. No matter even that.The final volume in McCarthy's grand trilogy which brings together John Grady Cole from All the Pretty Horses and Billy Parham from The Crossing, now working together on a ranch on the U.S.-Mexico border which is about to be taken over by the military. And the last dying days of an anachronistic cowboy lifestyle is matched by other endings.Repetition structures these book...

4.5McCarthy is a master. My only complaint is that he hasn't written more books. This is the third and final book of the Border trilogy, a gritty, down to earth tale of two friends, John Cole Grady and Billy Parham and their cowboying adventures between the States and the Mexican border. This one seemed to be more dialogue driven than any of the others, the characters carrying us through the story with their voice, done so well by McCarthy that a lot of backdrop description is not needed. To say...

65. Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy (1998, 292 pages within an Everyman's Library Hardcover edition of The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain, read Oct 4 - 18)Rating: 4.5 starsJohn Grady Cole and Billy Parham finally meet up as ranch hands on an old New Mexico ranch run a old man, Johnson. Johnson is going slowly senile. He walks in his sleep, looks defeated and lost after the somewhat recent death of his daughter. His ranch is run by his son-in-law,