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Comment by bklyn11201 | Hacker News Reader

Read The Border Trilogy first (a coming-of-age story set on the US-Mexico border):

  * All the Pretty Horses
  * The Crossing
  * Cities of the Plain

Then Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men.

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Calling the Border Trilogy a coming-of-age story is...one way to look at it for sure, given how it all ends. I love "The Crossing", top three McCarthy for me (the others being "Blood Meridian" of course and "Child of God").

Blood Meridian is getting all the praise, and that’s probably right, but I’d put The Crossing right up there with it. The last scene with the crippled dog conveys so much about the journey Billy has gone through, abba what it’s done to him… I don’t know if “coming of age” is so apt as “loss of innocence”

That stuff with the wolf in The Crossing was as deeply affecting to me as an adult as say, The Never Ending Story's Atrax in the Swamp of Sadness was for me as a kid.

I would second that, and add Suttree towards the end. I personally found The Road a little awkward, it felt unfortunately like an experiment in the SF / post-apocalyptic genre that was less successful than his surreal westerns.

And if you still want more westerns after that, Lonesome Dove and Paradise Sky. Neither are McCarthy, but they’re both amazing and will resonate with the same audience.

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