No Country for Old Men (Vintage International) by Cormac McCarthy Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of No Country for Old Men (Vintage International)
Book Review: McCarthy at his Meanest
Summary: 3 Stars
Llewelyn Moss,an ordinary joe,stumbles across $2 million and change in the desert and decides that he can keep it even though he knows where the money has come from and who will come after him for it.Enter Chigurh,a seemingly indestructible contract killer and other assorted mercenaries and Sheriff Bell forever one step behind the inevitable mayhem.
McCarthy,literary legend and writer of wonderful The Border Trilogy,peppers the book with philosophical musings(mainly from the sheriff),potent splashes of violence and some well drawn characters particularly the doomed man's young wife.
However what is indisputable is the callous way that he disposes of several main characters that serve only to jettison the story right out the window.There is no defence for this.Okay life is tough and you have to be responsible for your choices blah blah but McCarthy lays it on with a trowel- in his world no one is innocent and the meek shall not inherit the earth - just get trod underfoot.
Brilliant to half way then he rubs our noses in it.He should feel a little shame.I hope the Coen's take his characters and not the story- there is always room for a little hope(Postscript:Alas they did not)
Book Review: No Place for Anyone
Summary: 5 Stars
This book, though thrilling, is not really a thriller. There is plenty of action but it is not an action adventure. Set in the west but not a western. It's really a comment on American society, its morals and values.
There are three central characters; Llewelyn Moss, who stumbles across a brief case full of money at a place where a big drug deal has gone wrong. Anton Chigurh, a psychotic killer who has an original way of 'solving problems' for you and the reflective Sheriff Bell who makes some very perceptive observations and asks some very pointed questions.
What really makes the book quite special is the way in which the story is told. MaCarthy's style is utterly absorbing if not to say, at times, harrowing. Lyrical and evocative yet sparse. The characters are outstanding and the few plot holes easily overlooked. I'd be surprised if anyony read this and wasn't left unsettled.
Book Review: Trying to make sense of the world
Summary: 3 Stars
For me this novel was only superficially a thriller: the violent, bleak plot which other reviewers have outlined is punctuated by the narrator's thoughts on the modern US, and by extension the world, and his feeling of dislocation from it. I think it is from this theme that the novel takes its title. He is, in the opinion of another character, a 'hick sherriff, from a hick county, and a hick state': except that he isn't. On the verge of retirement, he is at pains to understand the increasing level of drug-related crime and violence he has to deal with. The novel captures, in beautifully uncluttered writing, the harsh landscapes of south and west Texas. Some other readers have said they found it difficult to get used to the vernacular - I didn't find this a problem at all: in fact I thought it added greatly to the atmosphere of the novel. All in all, a worthwhile read. It was the first novel by this writer I had read, but it did make me want to read others by him.Book Review: Gripping, Somber, Violent, and Brilliant
Summary: 5 Stars
I'd never read anything by McCarthy before, but am a huge Coen Brothers fan -- so when I learned that their next project was an adaptation of this book, I made a mental note to check it out. Of course, about a year came and went before I actually read it, and by then the movie was in theaters. So the day after finishing the book, I went out and saw the movie, with the result that my impression of the book and the film are completely intermingled in ways I would have a very hard time untangling. That said, the film version is one of the most faithful adaptations I've come across and a very large portion of its brilliance can be directly credited to McCarthy's novel.
Set in the early 1980s in Texas, the story revolves around three men. First is Llewelyn Moss, a rugged, capable Vietnam vet in his late '30s or so, who lives an honest life, likes a good time, has a sense of humor, and is the kind of handy everyman that makes for a good protagonist. The story opens with him out hunting antelope near the Rio Grande. in the course of which he discovers the aftermath of a heroin deal gone bad: several shot up pickups and a lot of dead Mexicans. He also tracks down a case containing several million dollars, and doesn't hesitate to grab it.
The second main character is Sheriff Bell, a rugged, reflective, weary old-timer in whose county the killings occurred. He speaks to the reader directly in monologues throughout the book, tying the country's history of violence to the violence of the story's events as he tries to figure out just what is going on. These can be rather cheesy and hokey at times, but that's part of the point -- their style established the Sheriff's as a man of the past. The future is embodied by the final man in the trinity, Anton Chigurh. Forget your serial killer or gangster stories, this very odd hit man is among the purest incarnation of evil to be found in modern fiction. He has been hired to track down the missing money, and by his logic anyone who causes him any delay simply needs to be deleted.
Moss's is a classic moral dilemma: what would you do if you found a lot of money. Would it matter where the money came from? Would the amount matter? Etc. In theory, Moss could have gotten clean away with the money, however his own code of ethics betrays him. His return to the scene of the carnage to fulfill a dying man's meaningless request both exhibits his humanity and makes him the prey of this story. Soon he is playing a deadly hide and seek with both Mexican drug dealers and Chigurh, with Sheriff Bell perpetually a step or three behind the action, cleaning up the bodies. Moss's sense of honor isn't his only problem though -- he also suffers from the sin of pride -- in believing he can handle Chigurh, he is responsible for a portion of this tragedy.
For some readers, Moss's decisions may be so improbable and at odds with the stakes involved that they will be frustrated. However, it's important to realize that this isn't a straightforward crime story. McCarthy's clearly using the genre to speak to larger themes, with each of the three main characters as almost mythic figures in a moral landscape of good and evil. Meanwhile, he also subverts the genre in several ways that oughtn't be revealed here but may also greatly frustrate some readers. Nonetheless, told with simple, almost staccato language, this a gripping, somber, and very violent story -- one that makes for both and outstanding read and an outstanding film.
Book Review: All is vanity
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw the film first and then I read the book. The film stuck pretty close to the original story and both are gripping. The story is fascinating and the central character, Sheriff Bell, bemoans the loss of values in society that results in monsters like Anton Chigurh, a murderer such as the world has never before seen and whose kind is making the world unfit for "Old Men" like himself to live in. I think there are people like Chigurh in real life, look at Richard Kuklinski for example, but such freaks will never become models for the rest of us, not while they exhibit hairstyles like Chigurh anyway.
The road to Hell begins with a decline in good manners and Sheriff Bell suggests that good manners consists in saying "yes sir", though being Scottish I think this is obsequious rather than respectful. Bell is old fashioned and does respect others and will not even treat the dead with contempt by labelling them "Mexican drug dealers". The only man Bell does not respect is Chigurh, as he considers him more demon than man and he is afraid of him.
Sheriff Bell is past it and is due for retirement. He is a good man but his belief that the world has become corrupted within his lifetime is mere vanity.