Cons: McCarthy's creative use of punctuation may strike some as pretentious.
The Bottom Line: This is a challenging and thought-provoking novel, yet accessible and extremely suspenseful. It's a fairly rare combination. Recommended for book discussion groups.
breakfastchamp's Full Review: Cormac McCarthy - No Country for Old Men: Movie-ti...
First off, I'll say that I found 'No Country for Old Men' to be an interesting and satisfying novel -- and well worth anyone's investment of time and/or money. It's very violent -- shockingly so at times, and action-driven. But in terms of ideas, you can sink your teeth into it -- making it a novel worthy of consideration for book discussion groups.
In the story, Sheriff Bell expresses bewilderment about the carnage left in the wake of a drug deal that went utterly wrong. He wonders what it is to be an officer of the law, now that crime and criminals seem to have hit new depths of depravity.
He says, “I ain’t sure we’ve seen these people before. Their kind. I don’t know what to do about em even. If you killed em all they’d have to build an annex on to hell.”
Punctuating this elegiac novel are his ruminations on goodness, the decline of polite society, and whether basic virtues like kindness and respect retain influence. Bell, of course, is one of the dispossessed old men implied by the book’s title.
Incidentally, the film of the same title by Joel and Ethan Coen is a close adaptation of McCarthy’s novel. The consensus so far is that it’s a brilliant film, in which the Coens bring their inverted sense of Americana to a contemporary Western tale.
A highly visual work, the novel unfolds in linear form, and derives its force from what characters say and do. McCarthy writes the dialogue unconventionally, without using quotation marks, (s)he said indicators, or punctuation except periods. McCarthy’s pages appear clean and uncluttered.
This simplifying narrative device has a striking impact on the reader’s eye, and reinforces the inner toughness of some characters, the brutality of others, and the indifference and impersonality which pervade the tone and atmosphere of the novel generally.
In this dry, dusty milieu, southwest Texas near the Mexican border – a region historically defined by conflict – violence seems to inescapably and ineradicably hang in the air. And while the characters living and moving within this environment are not incapable of tenderness or intimacy, their verbal interactions betray an ever-present reserve.
Social inhibitions against feeling foolish for speaking one’s mind, or being regarded as such, are sufficient in keeping lips tight and emotions well-guarded. Given these constrictions, Sheriff Bell’s first person narrations carry the weight of confession. Bell is a man who, as it becomes abundantly clear, wants to speak – urgently needs to speak – and his eventual unburdening to an elderly uncle about his lifelong shame over a war misdeed, gives insight into the deep motives behind his chosen career.
Bell’s character forms part of a triangle which includes Llewelyn Moss who foolishly, but understandably, removes two million dollars from the scene of the botched deal. The other third of the triangle is Anton Chigurh, emblematic of murderous, implacable evil, from whom Moss is on the run. Chigurh is behind most of the dramatic tension, which McCarthy maintains at an almost unbearable level.
In the final chapters, it becomes gradually clear that McCarthy’s commitment to the justice and revenge themes, which typically define Western narratives, is limited.
On one hand, we want and expect Bell to hunt Chigurh down and bring about bloody justice -- it's easy to bring that urgent expectation to our reading of the novel. Given what we know of Bell by the end, we may also be inclined to think that inflicting corrective revenge against Chigurh is Bell's most appropriate way to achieve redemption. On the other hand, readers may wonder whether the ending will really be that simple or tidy.
It's by manipulating our expectations in this way that McCarthy keeps us on the edge -- by making it very hard for us to predict what the novel's final outcome is going to look like. In reading and listening to the comments of other readers on the novel's conclusion, it is clear that a lot of readers are not satisfied with the ending.
By the end of the novel, I saw McCarthy's major theme as having to do with moral and personal compromise and resignation. And while I can certainly understand other readers' reasons for not liking the ending, I feel that it fits well with the theme -- which, in turn, seems like an urgently relevant one in today's world.
Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy ( All the Pretty Horses; The Crossing; Cities of the Plain ) was hailed as an American classic to stand with the fine...More at Barnes & Noble.com
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