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The Crossing

The Border Trilogy Book 2

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The Crossing

By: Cormac McCarthy
Narrated by: Richard Poe
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Sixteen-year-old Billy and his brother Boyd are fascinated by an elusive wolf that has been marauding his family's ranch. Billy captures the animal - but rather than kill it, sets out impulsively for the mountains of Mexico to return it to where it came from.

Billy returns, finding himself and his world have irrevocably changed. His loss of innocence has come at a price, and once again the border beckons with its desolate beauty and cruel promise.

©1994 Cormac McCarthy (P)2016 Recorded Books Inc Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Small Town & Rural Latin American
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Critic reviews

" The Crossing...towers over most contemporary fiction. An American epic infused with a grand solemnity." ( Sunday Times)
"McCarthy speaks to us in the thrilling, apocalyptic tones of an Old Testament prophet. We must treasure him." ( Sunday Telegraph)
"McCarthy writes prose as clean as a bullet cutting through the air and constructs tales as compelling as any you will read." ( Daily Telegraph)
All stars
Most relevant
This is by far the best read audiobook I've ever heard. Richard Poe is perfect from start to finish. I think I'd find it hard to listen to anyone else read Cormac McCarthy now.

It Couldn't Be Better

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Cormac McCarthy writes a good story. The second installment of this trilogy is as evocative of the era as the first.
I read the book some years ago but this in no way detracted from the listening, indeed I will happily listen again in years to come. An advantage of reading the book was the ability to flick through pages when the occasional character: Mexican peasant or gypsy present their rambling philosophy of life. We're it not of these interludes I would certainly award the book five stars *****
Time to revisit volume three . . . . just not for a little while.

Epic tale

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Beautifully told.
I’m working my way through the border trilogy. I feel like All the Pretty Horses was a warm up for this.
This book contains many stories within the main story as this is a story of the road & all the tales that come along it. This story is beautiful and heart wrenching.
I’m looking forward to the next one.

Beautiful and heart wrenching

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Beautiful writing. Beautifully read. It seemed timeless to me. A boy looking for meaning in his life and finding enough just to despair. I love the cinematic way it’s written with emotions shown in the outward actions not described overtly described. It made them more powerful.

Hypnotic

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Time to take a good look and just for once 'see' how fragile human life can be. Elements of Hardy's elemental fate and Conrad's simple refusal to try and know what can't really be known combine in a desert setting which puts everyone and everything 'out there' and on their own.

McCarthy's voice is always probing into areas that we rarely allow ourselves to go, recognising - if not the futility of existence - then surely the fact that we are all up against it in the struggle to move forwards.

Everything comes together in a book which never descends into philosophical 'abstraction' but just asks us to look a bit more closely at people and then move on. And it is this sense of movement - this momentum - which drives the narrative along, always seeking that something which may be over the horizon. And there is a lot of horizon in the desert lands of New Mexico and beyond.

If we were to value reading/listening as representing some form of escapism then you can do no better than this.

Wonderful narrator although I had to slow him down a bit to capture the 'space' which must accompany any reading of McCarthy. And the book two of a trilogy placement is completely irrelevant. This is simply a continuation of McCarthy's vision - the one that starts way back over there just past that arroyo and stretches as far as that cordillera over there with snow showing in places.

Simply magnificent - we all need to 'lose' ourselves at some time.

A Masterwork from a truly wonderful writer.

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