Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Cities of the Plain
    Cities of the Plain
    Cities of the Plain
    Audiobook9 hours

    Cities of the Plain

    Written by Cormac McCarthy

    Narrated by Frank Muller

    4.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    In his novels, best-selling author Cormac McCarthy creates a western landscape filled with characters that are both myhic and authentic. Cities of the Plain, the stunning conclusion of his award-winning Border trilogy, brings together John Grady Cole and Billy Parham-the two lifelong friends who began their adventures in All the Pretty Horses. It is 1952. As Grady and Billy work a remote New Mexico ranch, Grady falls in love with a young Mexican prostitute. Determined to free her from her owner, Grady embarks on his dangerous quest of the heart. Billy tries to protect and help him, but the forces at work soon demand sacrifices greater than either can control. Capturing visions of the American West during its last decades, McCarthy's powerful work is destined to leave a permanent mark on contemporary literature. You don't have to read the other books in the trilogy to enjoy superstar narrator Frank Muller's performance, which brings a dramatic intensity to Cities of the Plain and makes it an exceptional listening experience.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateFeb 25, 2011
    ISBN9781456124588
    Author

    Cormac McCarthy

    Cormac McCarthy was the author of many acclaimed novels, including Blood Meridian, Child of God and The Passenger. Among his honours are the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His works adapted to film include All the Pretty Horses, The Road and No Country for Old Men – the latter film receiving four Academy Awards, including the award for Best Picture. McCarthy died in 2023 in Santa Fe, NM at the age of 89.

    More audiobooks from Cormac Mc Carthy

    Related to Cities of the Plain

    Titles in the series (3)

    View More
    View More

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Reluctant Legend

      Jul 21, 2020

      Reluctant Legend
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Excerpt

      May 21, 2019

      In the yellow corridor they marched the women single file. Jodi, feeling the worry of the eight at her back, wondered what significance to attach to her position as first behind the sergeant. Not much at Jaxton was left to chance. Oldest, she thought

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Too BAD

      Aug 30, 2022

      Too BAD
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Loss of Heaven

      Dec 1, 2020

      He weighed 210 pounds buck-ass naked; 217 in his leather jacket and boots, which he wore that crisp March evening to the bar along with a gold pin in his lapel. It was shaped like a spade, a gift from his wife when they were young, once she’d discove

      22 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Lame Joke

      Nov 5, 2020

      A Lame Joke
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Kings

      Jun 5, 2023

      1.Kings lie down to zip up their jeans,buy Cetaphil, candy, magazinesat Walgreens because they canwalk there unsupervised, describeblowjobs they’ve given to seniorsin cars, spend what they think of astheir own money. Home sick from school,they learn

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Frost FAIR

      Jan 18, 2023

      Frost FAIR
      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      No-good Samaritans

      Jul 6, 2023

      An icy blast hit my face as I crouched in a dark doorway, pulling the three damp coats I had on tighter around me. ‘Any spare change, please?' I whimpered as people went into the 24-hour convenience shop behind me. It was November 2018, and I was hom

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Emperors of Existence

      Dec 28, 2018

      The Emperors of Existence
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Poetry

      Oct 4, 2022

      Michael Torres was born and brought up in Pomona, California, where he spent his adolescence as a graffiti artist. His debut collection, An Incomplete List of Names, was a National Poetry Series selection and was named one of NPR’s 2020 Books We Love

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      What is the uncanny valley? asks the student and I draw the graph on the board, and point to the lowest point, and then move up the slope; This is like a scarecrow, it’s kinda shaped like a human but you’re not sure; This is where you’d put a mannequ

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      New NEIGHBOUR

      Oct 21, 2020

      “It was a cold rainy morning and Mr Dear was staring out of the sitting room window. He does this because a) he thinks it makes him look wistful and sensitive, and b) he knows it annoys me when I’m dusting because he could be lifting up all the usele

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Righteous

      Jan 22, 2019

      Righteous
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems

      Sep 1, 2020

      Her arm was in the other roomwhen he arrived—not with her bodystill breathing in the livingroom. In and out of consciousness.And blood of course.But not as much as you might expect.So he retrieved the arm—lifted it into a bag full of herfreezer conte

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Know When to Hold ’Em: The world is your casino. But bettors beware—the house always wins.

      Sep 24, 2015

      The last customer from the after-bar rush left, leaving a dozen snow-dusted cars scattered across the half-acre lot. These were the folks who’d gotten lucky enough to go home with someone else, or drunk enough to go home in a cab. Huddled in the tiny

      17 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Leather Coat

      Apr 4, 2024

      The Leather Coat
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Chop-chop

      Feb 6, 2020

      Chop-chop
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Zero

      May 10, 2019

      Zero
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      We Take Plastic

      Dec 1, 2022

      We Take Plastic
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      On The Edge Of Seventeen

      Oct 19, 2018

      On The Edge Of Seventeen
      16 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Freshening

      Sep 15, 2018

      My cashier’s black hair was beautiful. Though not unlike mine, it was shinier and thicker, and hung glamorously down to her waist. It looked strong, too, like Christopher Reeve’s in the Superman movies. A strand of Superman’s silvery hair could hold

      21 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Clichés

      Jan 18, 2023

      Clichés
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Playing God

      Apr 10, 2023

      After Jack was abducted by the alien spaceship, and after the round vessel had vanished into the Milky Way, he found himself walking down a tubular corridor with white vibrating walls, escorted by a sinuous blonde who smiled graciously and said her n

      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Human Contact

      Aug 10, 2022

      Beer tasted like wet money—or maybe just bad beer did. Viola had never tried any other kind. She preferred white wine, but there was no white wine at this party. “Drink it like medicine,” the guy manning the keg said. “It’ll loosen you up.” He wore a

      18 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      From Fixer

      May 1, 2023

      We’re breaking into your apartmentthrough your bedroom window. The maintenance guy’s ladderis propped against the sill. I climb the ladder rung by rung,it shivers, I try not to look down. A face appears in the glass.What are you doing, the face says.

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Cities of the Plain

    4.5/5

    37 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Whew. Read the trilogy over a span of three or four days. What a ride.

      Beautiful writing as always. This one has more philosophical discourse on life and death, much more so than the other two. A tragic story, but one which is cathartic and oddly dignifying.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      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.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      The heroes of the two previous novels in Cormac McCarthy's border trilogy return together in this one. John Grady Cole (from All the pretty horses) is still a young man whereas Billy Parham (The Crossing) is somewhat older--both working on a ranch near the New Mexico-Mexico border near the border cities of El Paso and Ciudad Jaurez. The story's main thread is developed around Cole's falling in love with a teenage Mexican prostitute--Magdalena and his attempting to bring her back over the border to marry her. Her Mexican brothel keepers/protectors have much different ideas about someone(thing) they consider their property. As in the previous two novels of this trilogy the novels denouement revolves around the clash between two different cultures living right on each others doorsteps. John recruits Billy Parham to act as a kind of go between between himself and the brothelkeepers (Eduardo and Tiburcio) but they're only interested in discouraging this liason. John then turns to an older Mexican he's met--a blind man but he cannot help him. He is in love though and cannot be stopped from the course he is on which only leads us to the books tragic and bloody climax. Though not quite as good as The Crossing--this is a simpler and shorter story and it plays to McCarthy's strengths as a writer. A little less concentrated in style than other works of his--the prose is clearer and more lucid. McCarthy is very economical in his dialogue and is one if not just about the best writer of action scenes in the United States today. Many writers would have turned this kind of material into a tearjerker but McCarthy maintains a very tight control over his story and the vision of where to go with it. The whole series is very enjoyable and well worth reading --at least IMO and I expect that within the next couple of years I may have read all his books. I look very much forward to his next.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      he concluding part in the Border Trilogy brings together the main character from each of the preceding novels, John Grady Cole from All the Pretty Horses, and Billy Parham from The Crossing. It is set after the war, John Grady is nineteen and Billy some ten years older, they are working together on a ranch at a time when the traditional life of the cowboy is threatened. This book is very much about the friendship between these two young men, a friendship closer perhaps than they realise, with Billy seeing himself very much as looking out for John Grady. The story centres around their life on the ranch and John Grady's ill-advised love for a young prostitute. We get to know also their co-workers on the ranch, and along the way there are little vignettes involving additional characters very much in the vein of the other books in the Trilogy. Cities of the Plain is every bit as good as the preceding books, beautifully written the sparse prose yet evokes the setting and the life of these men in a time of change. It is a most enjoyable read, there is humour, but is also heart-warming and at times heart-rending, deep in meaning; a worthy conclusion to a superb Trilogy.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Beautiful, and heartbreaking.
    • 5/5
      It's 1952 and Mac's ranch has been purchased by the US Government. Jack Grady Cole and Billy Parham, two young cowboys who have grown up on the US-Mexican border (origin stories in [All the Pretty Horses] and [The Crossing]), face the disappearance of their way of life. McCarthy tells us what these characters do, what they say, but not what they think. The rhythm of their deeds and speech entwines with the cadence of McCarthy's language, irrevocably leading to what must come next: "Each event is revealed to us only at the surrender of every alternate course." The best description I can give you of this NY Times Notable Book of 1998 is to call it a Literary Shakesperean American Western Tragic Romance. And say that I rate it at 10 out of 10 stars.
    • 4/5
      Not as absorbing as The Crossing, which has a magical realism quality but probably too much Spanish for anyone that doesn't have a little hs Spanish. The Spanish here is sparse and very basic.It is a slow start, which must put off many readers new to McCarthy or the trilogy. (My advice: you can skim over the dog-hunting section.) However, once I got to the part where The Girl/ hooker with the heart of gold was walking toward her fate, I couldn't stop/had to keep stopping, if you get my drift. McCarthy's style is so understated, I didn't know he had it in him.Female characters are not McCarthy's strong suit, I gather after reading three of his novels. Yes, most depictions of Third World prostitutes by male novelists bear no semblance to reality but there are far more ridiculous ones than this one. At least in a dream-like thought of John Grady's we get an idea of how she reached this point. All too similar to the route so many in Thailand follow (although they're not going to end up servicing the high-end johns, not for long). You're never going to see that in Graham Greene's dusky wet dreams. That being said, every woman in a locked brothel/indentured situation has a buy-out price. This woman in particular does not have much of a shelf life. Eduardo is supposed to be "in love" with her? Then he wouldn't be renting her out. He wouldn't marry her; he'd keep her on the side. He has to be married already, FWIW.It's nitpicky but ... why was this rigamarole, getting a green card, etc. necessary? Why trust so many intermediaries? John Grady Cole has been seeing her, communicates the plan to her ...why doesn't he, possibly with Billy, just escort her personally across? It seems that the plan was to take her across the river at an unofficial crossing regardless. She could pass for Socorro's grandchild or whatever. Would a card be necessary for a wedding? I just don't buy it. Which of these Americans has any official id?Eduardo: "This is what had brought you here and will always bring you here. Your kind cannot bear that the world be ordinary. That it contains nothing save what stands before one. But the Mexican world is a world of adornment only and underneath it is very plain indeed ...And we will devour you, my friend. You and all your pale empire."