Product Description
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.
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Amazon.com Review
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
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 A Fitting Conclusion ( swilliamfoley )
In this third installment of The Border Trilogy, McCarthy brings together John Grady Cole from Book I and Billy Parham from Book II as they work together on a ranch. Though neither delves too deeply into the tragedies in Mexico they both suffered, their unspoken experiences seem to bind them in ways they can't understand.
A fitting conclusion to The Border Trilogy, McCarthy gives us the final fates of the two heroes we grew to love in previous volumes, and he does so in true McCarthy style. While the plot is fairly simple, the book is anything but. McCarthy once again offers dazzling asides that build characterization and encourages the reader to take ownership in Cole and Parham's lives. The task of the savvy novelists is not only to tell a good story, but to draw the reader into the day-to-day existence of his characters so thoroughly that the reader forgets it's fiction in which they're vicariously taking part. McCarthy does just that with Cities of the Plain.
His deceptively complex tale is one that is concise yet expansive, beautiful yet mundane, noble yet tragic. Like life, it is all these things and more.
~Scott William Foley, author of Souls Triumphant
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 Great language, not necessarily great story ( ecblisa )
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.
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 The Ending Of Two
It's been a while since I've read good fiction, and it seems I've read some stinkers of late.
But I went back to McCarthy and was welcomed back to his violent Texas border town world with open arms.
John Grady and Billy Parham were each the focus in their respective narratives about them, The Crossing and All The Pretty Horses, and here's where they story ends, or what comes to be of these two cowboys.
They're together on a ranch, working as hands, and John Grady falls in love with a young Mexican prostitute, and this sets the back drop of what happens in the novel.
It's rare to laugh out loud at a book, but I did this several times while reading the exchanges between the two main characters and the other ranch hands. There' s a love between them, for what they do and what they are, and you can see in the wording.
As much as I laughed at the dialogue, these books are never an easy pill to swallow with Cormac, as he takes you to places you don't want to go, and people die who you don't want to die. But isn't that a way to show how powerful his writing is?
In other stories, in most pop fiction, I'm not going to lose sleep over who is killed and who is let to live, but McCarthy connects you with his characters, with their flesh, weaknesses and flaws, and also with their more honorable sides. He makes you give a hang.
John Grady Cole wanted to take a girl who was in trouble, and give her a good life, not even mentioning that he loved her, and that is such a good sentiment and a powerful gesture. Everyone was against it but her and him, and he goes for it anyway.
This wasn't my favorite out of the Border trilogy. Most would pick All The Pretty Horses, but my heart places The Crossing above the rest.
That being said, this is a great read, and I highly recommend picking it up if you are a fan of modern day Westerns (set in the 30's or 40's), or if you are a fan of McCarthy.
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Gripping ( karlm23 )
The conclusion of Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy is a solemn and beautiful exploration on the erosion of the classical west. McCarthy's dialog is truly masterful and naturalistic-the swing of the interactions paints a remarkably vivid picture of friendship and trust. We are also fed typical McCarthy elements: horrendous violence, prostitution, dog fights, horses, and sun-baked malaise. I found that the guarded and impenetrable nature of the protagonist's stoicism made them even more intriguing, and the climactic sequence demonstrates an impressive ability to manipulate tension. Cities of the Plain is a very fine aesthetic accomplishment, even if the concluding sequence is overly self-conscious and postmodern.
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Omit epilogue ( hanevy )
I think the epilogue adds nothing to the novel, unless somehow I missed the point entirely. C. M. has elsewhere more skillfully put forth his theme that our destinies are predetermined practically from the "big bang" and that, appearances to the contrary, we really have no choices. The last thirty pages get to sound like a harangue.
Besides, I would have welcomed a novel about Billy's later life. I love C. M.'s beautifully descriptive language, and the series is ending too quickly for my taste.
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