No Country for Old Men

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It's a hit!

This is one of McCarthy's more entertaining and accessible novels, but don't mistake that for equating it with thoughtless narrative. Being more p... (show more)

This is one of McCarthy's more entertaining and accessible novels, but don't mistake that for equating it with thoughtless narrative. Being more plot-driven than his other works, this was a mighty quick read.

I watched the movie first, which didn't detract from the novel at all for me (except picturing Javier Bardem as Chigurh... I can't see it any other way!) The film lacks the internal monologue and character development of Sheriff Bell, who is a main character (if not THE main character) in the novel. The movie almost makes the flaw of reducing the story to a cat-and-mouse game. The book is still just as entertaining at that face value, but Chigurh is more than just a psychopath, he is a man with a distinct philosophy. Chigurh's determinist beliefs are the fuel for his fury - he's not deciding on his actions by a chance coin toss, fate has already decided what the outcome would be. Sheriff Bell likewise struggles with the futility of his own actions... perhaps this degradation of morality in society is written in the heavens. Both men seem to have reached a similar conclusion in this novel, but to completely different ends. (show less)

 

 

by Facebook-gebruiker

No, it's a flop!

Maybe it was the fact that I had to read the dialog over and over to calculate who was talking due to the lack of dialog tags or differentiation in... (show more)

Maybe it was the fact that I had to read the dialog over and over to calculate who was talking due to the lack of dialog tags or differentiation in characters' voices. The sparse prose didn't work because it lacked color and dimension. Even in the quiet, dusty landscape of west Texas, there's more to people than dropped Ys and Gs. Maybe it was the awkward zoom-in, slow-motion infatuation with the details of every firearm in the story. Maybe it was the tired, fruitless preoccupation with the mind of a psychopath, like a schizophrenic searching for the secret code in the wallpaper. Maybe it was the old man blaming the explosion of violence in his part of the country on young people with green hair and piercings. This book was a disappointment because it tried to make something out of nothing.

The fact is that a bunch of people got in the way of a psychopath. There is no wisdom in Chigurh's monologues and speeches. He's just crazy.

On a positive note, I enjoyed reading it for the chase, especially early on. And it did leave me with one solid thought: There seems to be a time for black-and-white-good-and-bad morality. Most of the time life is much more complicated, with many more shades of grey. This book annoyed me, but I have been thinking about the nature of morality ever since. Damn, maybe it did make something of the chase. (show less)

 

 

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  Remarkable book. Entertaining and thought-provoking; the antagonist, Chigurh, is among the most compelling characters I've read about in a long time, and he forms only a third of the trinity of central characters in "No Country". Moss, the "good old boy" who stumbles across a huge cache of drug money and Sheriff Bell, the philosophically-inclined lawman who is out of his element and knows it, make up the counter-points to the psychotic and cool-headed Chigurh.
  A couple ... (show more)

  Remarkable book. Entertaining and thought-provoking; the antagonist, Chigurh, is among the most compelling characters I've read about in a long time, and he forms only a third of the trinity of central characters in "No Country". Moss, the "good old boy" who stumbles across a huge cache of drug money and Sheriff Bell, the philosophically-inclined lawman who is out of his element and knows it, make up the counter-points to the psychotic and cool-headed Chigurh.
  A couple of minor complaints: the irritating and slightly pretentious lack of quotation marks in dialogue was really off-putting for a long time. And also (perhaps a bigger deal) the novel sort of... kept going... after the story was effectively over. Action resolved, but Mr. McCarthy barelled on for another thirty pages or so, having Sheriff Bell philosophize and take an unpleasant stroll down memory lane. Perhaps those ending sequences would have been better somewhere else in the text, not tacked on at the end.
  Despite that, though, this was an excellent novel. I intend to read more McCarthy. (show less)

   

   

  by Heath Lowrance on Feb 26, 2009 at 10:16PM

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  My biggest problem with this book was that I saw the movie first, and it's the first time I've ever experienced a movie that is SO true to the book that reading it was just like a re-run. Kudos to the Cohen Bros because wow -- I've never seen such a close and true adaptation of book to movie. But because of that it's kind of hard to separate the two in my head for the purposes of a review.

  I really enjoyed the book -- the one thing it had on the movie is that the characters were even more co... (show more)

  My biggest problem with this book was that I saw the movie first, and it's the first time I've ever experienced a movie that is SO true to the book that reading it was just like a re-run. Kudos to the Cohen Bros because wow -- I've never seen such a close and true adaptation of book to movie. But because of that it's kind of hard to separate the two in my head for the purposes of a review.

  I really enjoyed the book -- the one thing it had on the movie is that the characters were even more colorful and robust. In that sense I enjoyed the book far more than the movie. His characterizations were fantastic. But I did think the book rambled on a bit past its natural ending.

  Regardless, I really liked it. It was my first foray into Cormac McCarthy and I wasn't disappointed. (show less)

   

   

  by Alison Deigan on Feb 09, 2009 at 04:39PM

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