Todos los caballos bellos

All the best westerns it would seem are about the end of an era and this one is no exception. John Grady and his young friend Rawlins head for Mexico where they are employed on a hacienda and inevitably Grady and the hacendado's young daughter fall in love. And of course the protagonist is a young boy, this is a Cormac McCarthy novel! (though there are some that don't have this feature, I believe, e.g. "No Country for Old Men" and the deeply untypical road-movie comedy "Suttree.")
Despite the occasional flourish of McCarthy's authentic Biblical frontier gibberish this novel is mostly about the horses - that mainstay of the western already, in the just-post-WW2 of the book, giving way to the truck and the motor car although in his Mexicans Grady finds people who share his love.
There is sudden bloody violence and a more subtle sclerosis of the prevailing culture in which to try to change is to die (as we are informed in a long monologue about the recent and bloody history of Mexico, ''pobre Mexico, tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos''). A people fascinated with society and politics (he tells us) and unsuited to both. And a radio evangelist whom I suspect is based on Bob Jones (1883-1968), one of the pioneers of radiophonic yammering.
But in the end it is almost self-defeating. The western is dead and if you were to say, long live the western, well as another character says, bringing dead bodies up is no good. Only Jesus could do anything with them.

First Cormac McCarthy book I’ve read and his style could not be ignored from page one. First McCarthy writes these long never ending sentences describing the western landscape, which put the reader in the mood of the times. Second his dialog doesn’t have much punctuation and is interlaced with Spanish. I didn’t love the style, but found acceptance.
The story: a different take on the journey motif. The young man left with few choices, decides to go to a foreign country. In the foreign country he faces a series of trails. He consummates with the most desirable female of that land. However, he can’t take her back. There is a consolation prize; horses. He is as infatuation with horses as women. So while he doesn’t get the girl, he gets a horse.
I don’t know how much he really changes. It’s not the classic journey or bildungsroman. There is the Dances with Wolves piece where he takes the foreign woman, which is the same as the Avatar however, there isn’t a lot of reflection on feelings here – these are the last cowboys. There is a story of two friends on a journey, they stick with each other, until they have to split, but reunite.
The story takes place in 1949. So while the west of horses and cattle will disappear in a few years, maybe longer to the south in Mexico, there is no reflection or foreshadowing here.
The author engages the reader in a believable world just to the south of Texas - a gritty reality of cowboys, Mexicans and class consciousness.
I would recommend it.