Blair Worden
Cormac McCarthy's novel, All The Pretty Horses, first published in 1992, would have been my book of that year had I read it then. It is now in paperback (Pan Macmillan, £5.99) so I hope it can be my book of 1993. Some critics have wondered whether this tale of teenage heroism and adventure and love, set in the landscape of the Western, can really be literature. I found it a work of extraordinary power and beauty. I happened to read it alongside a tale of teenage heroism and adventure and love written four centuries ago, Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, and was as struck by the resemblances as by the con- trasts.
Sir Peter Hall has written a warm and witty autobiography, with the misguided title Making an Exhibition of Myself (Sinclair-Stevenson, £20). I only wish it had offered fuller insights into his work.
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