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5 Essential Novels by the Late Cormac McCarthy
The esteemed author of 'The Road' has passed away at age 89, but his work will live on
Photo by Mark Von Holden/Getty Images for Dimension Films
Cormac McCarthy, the author of iconic works of fiction — including his bestselling, National Book Award-winning 1992 novel All The Pretty Horses — passed away June 13 at his Santa Fe, New Mexico, home at age 89.
His most recent books, which were published late last year, were linked novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris. Both rather grim, they featured Bobby Western, a salvage diver who’s afraid of the watery depths, and sister Alicia, who’s been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
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McCarthy wasn’t a sunny writer, to be sure.
His stories tended to focus on the dark side of human nature, including the truly bloody Blood Meridian (1985) and the Western crime thriller No Country for Old Men (2005). The latter was turned into a riveting Oscar-winning film by the Coen Brothers, with Javier Bardem starring as Anton Chigurh, one of the most unforgettable and chilling villains in movie history.
McCarthy, who grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, was famously private; The New York Times described him as a “gregarious recluse” in a 1992 profile. The story included a rare interview with the author, in which he offered a telling quote: “There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom.”
If you’ve never explored the author’s work, consider starting with one of his five most notable novels.
No Country For Old Men
A gripping Western thriller, this 2005 novel dives deep into the dark side. Texan Llewellyn Moss stumbles across an abandoned truck, men shot dead around it, with a load of heroin and cash — a drug deal gone very bad. He takes off with the money and finds himself pursued by violent enemies (including the aforementioned Chigurh). Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is the conscience of the story, and eventually overwhelmed by the violence in his midst.
The Road
One of McCarthy’s best known works, this Pulitzer Prize winner is a postapocalyptic classic about a devoted father and son trying to survive in a frightening, decimated world, much of it burned to ash. The story is as bleak as can be, in one sense, but also a testament to humans’ capacity to love in the most desperate of times. The Guardian called it “terrifying, but also beautiful and tender.” It was adapted into a 2009 film starring Viggo Mortensen.
All the Pretty Horses
A bestseller and National Book Award winner, this 1992 novel is centered on a 16-year-old Texas boy named John Cole Grady and his experiences — some brutal, some comic — while traveling with companions to Mexico. The first book in his Border Trilogy (followed by 1994’s The Crossing and 1998’s Cities of the Plain) was dubbed a “singular achievement” by Publishers Weekly, whose reviewer described it as “so exuberant in its prose, so offbeat in its setting and so mordant and profound in its deliberations that one searches in vain for comparisons in American literature.” A 2000 movie version starred Penelope Cruz and Matt Damon.
The Crossing
Vintage
Though it’s second in the trilogy, The Crossing features a new set of characters: teenage cowboy Billy Parham and his brother Boyd. Set on the border of New Mexico and Mexico in the 1930s, it begins with Billy and his father hunting a wolf that’s been troubling his family’s ranch. But Billy refuses to kill her; instead, he chooses to take her to safety in the mountains of Mexico. He later makes the crossing twice more; facing violence on all these journeys. Kirkus called it “relentless, frequently brutal, and morbidly fatalistic” but “also passionate and compelling.”
Blood Meridian
Vintage
Widely considered McCarthy’s masterpiece, this 1985 novel turns a real historical episode — the brutal adventures of the Glanton gang, paid by the government to scalp Indians in the 19th century war against Mexico — into an epic as wildly literary as Moby Dick. Its young hero, the Kid, meets Judge Holden, a scholarly monster and murder machine. It’s a Western to end all Westerns.
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