I did love this but found it slightly less successful than the first book in this trilogy. For one thing it follows an almost identical formula - innocence going out into the big bad world. The opening when a young boy watches wolves at play in the snow at night is magical. It continues in this gripping fashion when the boy takes pity on the wolf he and his father have caught in a trap and decides to take the injured animal back to the mountains of Mexico. The relationship he creates between the...

The Crossing is an astonishing book, more downbeat than All the Pretty Horses, yet not as bleak as the likes of Blood Meridian, it is a sprawling coming-of-age tale filled with moments of beauty and sorrow. The descriptions are as beautiful as anything Cormac McCarthy writes, the action is sparse but nailbiting when it comes and the characters are brilliantly realised. There are moments when the book lags but whenever this happens you can be assured that within a couple of pages McCarthy will co...

Acts of God“Before he reached the door the old man called to him again. The boy turned and stood. The matrix will not help you, the old man said. He said to catch the wolf the boy should find that place where the acts of God and those of man are of one piece. Where they cannot be distinguished. The old man said that it was not a question of finding such a place but rather of knowing it when it presented itself. He said that it was at such places that God sits and conspires in the destruction of

Alice Munro said in an interview that our lives begin as straightforward stories with the typical arc of fiction, but that as we go on living they become strange, experimental narratives, convoluted and difficult to interpret. It seems to me that's what's happening in this second volume of the Border Trilogy. Volume One was pretty straightforward, taut and clear in its construction. It told a story of a young man's searing introduction to the adult world. Volume Two does the same--with a differe...

The way Cormac McCarthy can compose a story so rich with aesthetics, tragedy, philosophical musings and eclectic language reaches a majestic level in The Crossing. The balance and competition between nature and man, life and death, and the journey within are all personified in a raw, yet beautiful way. Another amazing read from McCarthy that feeds the reader’s subconscious and continues to create a world in The Border Trilogy that becomes your hypnotic reality, your heartache and your journey al...

It was not long after I joined Goodreads when he messaged me for the first time. He did not even have a profile picture; all that was to be seen were his books and his name. He explained that he just joined the site, and we began to talk; soon we arranged to read our first book together. I was his first friend here - I'm still happy about it -but soon he became a regular in our community of readers, and a popular one. Goodreads seemed to be a little more close-knit back then; I certainly was mor...

This was very depressing, and that's just how life goes which is the point I think McCarthy was trying to make.

Beautiful, beautiful book. I am such a fan of Cormac McCarthy. Poetic realism, I would describe his style.

Far more melancholic than its predecessor All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing is a beautiful if bleak western full of poetry and philosophical musings. The Billy character is wonderfully drawn and in particular the first part of the book with the wolf was outstanding. McCarthy's sparse Hemmingway-esque style lends an austere and yet often humorous tone to the dialogues - particularly those both spoken and unspoken between Billy and Boyd. I appreciate the author's reluctance to dummy down the sto...

One decision, as innocent as it may be, can fuck up your life forever. Now, you can live in fear and hide yourself away, or you can keep making those decisions and hope for the best, and if and when the shit hits the fan, you can stand strong and push on.That's life. That's The Crossing.Cormac McCarthy's "The Border" trilogy is where you'll find dusty plains, hard living, and a recent past populated by a people still living in an even more distant past. His characters are full of character, thei...

Long voyages often lose themselves.This was a more somber book than the previous one which was more uplifting and adventurous but I liked it nonetheless. There were moments when the story would veer off on a philosophical tangent which frankly went over my head but I didn't have the heart to deduct a star because I loved the book as a whole. The story is about a young man named Billy Parham who one day finds a she-wolf caught in his trap but instead of killing her, he befriends the wolf and they...

I'm not sure what I expected going into this read, but I certainly didn't expect such a radiant, brutal, multi-faceted experience. For me, it succeeded on so many levels. Often spartan with his language, McCarthy is exacting with its impact. A spur-of-the-moment decision sends young Billy into Mexico and creates a kind of Bildungsroman-as-lamentation. Every stranger he encounters is like an oracle in disguise. Some deliver advice. Some wish to deliver death. A world where hospitality and danger

Video reviewThe first handful of chapters alone would be worth the read, even if they wasn't a masterpiece attached to them.

Some novels are never over, this is one. It's always going to be exquisite and cruel in the reading, it will be a book to read and love, to read and be devastated by: 'Some vast tragedy not of fact or incident or event but of the way the world was'.

Second Reading: June 2021This second time trough, I was amazed at the countless details I had forgotten since my first reading. I think this is due to the overshadowing effect of All the Pretty Horses and Cities of the Plain. Both of these books are human-focused in a brutally honest way. The Crossing, however, is something a bit different. While it’s certainly human focused, it attempts at times to live in that mystic place that exists between what we know and what we cannot explain. If humans

The Crossing is a coming of age story set in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s near the US-Mexican border. It is the second book in McCarthy’s “Border Trilogy,” but may be read as a standalone. It is broken into three sections, with each correlated to one of Billy’s three quests.As the book opens, teenage protagonist Billy lives with his parents and brother on the family’s isolated ranch in the New Mexican desert. He makes three trips across the border, involving a wolf, the family’s horses, and