SOURCE: "True West," in Village Voice, Vol. XXXIX, No. 27, July 5, 1994, p. 81.

In the following review, Carr focuses on the deeper meanings within the bleak and desolate settings and occurrences in The Crossing. Acknowledging that there is purpose to the bloodshed and evil in McCarthy's novels, Carr comments on the themes of loss and the human condition in the works.

A boy is traveling through Mexico on horseback, leaving the Southwest, leaving home. That's a bald outline of Cormac McCarthy's new novel, The Crossing. In his last novel, All the Pretty Horses, two boys traveled from the Southwest into Mexico. As did a boy in his previous book, Blood Meridian, or, The Evening Redness in the West. Yet the voyages are as different as if set on separate continents.

In The Crossing, a 16-year-old named Billy Parham makes three trips south of the border. There he both endures tragedy...