Product Description

In No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy simultaneously strips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s headlines.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1322 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-09
• Released on: 2007-10-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Seven years after Cities of the Plain brought his acclaimed Border Trilogy to a close, McCarthy returns with a mesmerizing modern-day western. In 1980 southwest Texas, Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, stumbles across several dead men, a bunch of heroin and $2.4 million in cash. The bulk of the novel is a gripping man-on-the-run sequence relayed in terse, masterful prose as Moss, who's taken the money, tries to evade Wells, an ex–Special Forces agent employed by a powerful cartel, and Chigurh, an icy psychopathic murderer armed with a cattle gun and a dangerous philosophy of justice. Also concerned about Moss's whereabouts is Sheriff Bell, an aging lawman struggling with his sense that there's a new breed of man (embodied in Chigurh) whose destructive power he simply cannot match. In a series of thoughtful first-person passages interspersed throughout, Sheriff Bell laments the changing world, wrestles with an uncomfortable memory from his service in WWII and—a soft ray of light in a book so steeped in bloodshed—rejoices in the great good fortune of his marriage. While the action of the novel thrills, it's the sensitivity and wisdom of Sheriff Bell that makes the book a profound meditation on the battle between good and evil and the roles choice and chance play in the shaping of a life.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
For 40 years, since The Orchard Keeper, Cormac McCarthy has brought forth literature as important as it is rare. Beyond that, critics and readers tend to diverge wildly with each novel, which to my eye is further proof of the writer's power. No Country for Old Men will have the same effect. This is a profoundly disturbing and gorgeously rendered novel that will certainly be quibbled with. Not the least of the objections will almost surely be what makes the novel so attractive. No Country for Old Men is the most accessible of all McCarthy's works. This is not necessarily a good thing.

The plot is simple. One fine morning in west Texas, a young Vietnam vet is antelope hunting when he comes upon the carnage of a drug deal gone bad. Both heroin and a suitcase of cash remain at the site, along with a number of bodies. The cash is enough to entice the otherwise upright Llewelyn Moss to steal it, although conveniently it's not so much that it can't be carried, not even after Moss receives the first in a long line of wounds. Moss has a moral clarity reminiscent of John Grady Cole from All the Pretty Horses (1992); he knows he's making the worst mistake of his life but can't resist the temptation or the chance to test himself. He knows he'll be hunted (and hunted he is) but believes he can outsmart the hunters.

The other two main characters enter as polarities: a psychopathic killer, Anton Chigurh, whose only apparent moral code is to leave no witnesses to his existence; and Sheriff Bell, a World War II veteran who's a bit smarter than most other law enforcement officers and does his best to find and protect Moss while offering thoughts on existence and the unhinged modern world. The sheriff has his own dark secret which, unfortunately, is somewhat at odds with his character.

Finally, other than a handful of minor characters, there are three women -- or two and a half, depending how you count. The wives of Moss and Bell are tough, tender women, rock-solid square behind their men. The third has the same potential but like most everyone in the novel winds up dead first.

McCarthy's language is stripped lean and mean here. In places, dialogue carries large sections of the story. His ear for speech, dialect and wordplay remains noteworthy in American letters. His descriptive passages are lucid and visual -- this novel needs no film adaptation. He writes in painstaking and painful detail about self-treatment of gunshot wounds, exhibiting a near-morbid fascination that's beyond the call of the narrative. Even what in previous novels were long digressions are now minimal injections of first-person rumination and reflection by Bell. In short, No Country for Old Men is a page-turner. Readers who have been unwilling to wade through McCarthy's more complicated fables will be swept along for the ride. Many long-term readers will do the same.

So what's not to like? Plenty. The symbolism is achingly awkward, starting with the names; Moss, Bell, Chigurh (rhymes with "sugar" but reminded this reader of chigger, the small boring insect that gets under the skin and causes a rash, pain and possibly blood infection). Narcotics are the broken hinge of the world or, as the sheriff, who offers homely and homespun thoughts at a numbing rate, has it, "If you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics." Modern society's abandonment of Christ is frequently mentioned, which, while fitting the near-stereotypical rural nature of these characters, is handled simplistically. Even moments that on first reading appear insightful lose their sheen a second time through:

"Every moment in your life is a turning and every one a choosing. Somewhere you made a choice. All followed to this. The accounting is scrupulous. The shape is drawn. No line can be erased. I had no belief in your ability to move a coin to your bidding. How could you? A person's path through the world seldom changes and even more seldom will it change abruptly. And the shape of your path was visible from the beginning."

Bell's wife, Loretta, is quickly sketched but has a vibrancy lacking in more fully realized women from previous works. Still, it's hard to picture ex-prisoners bringing their new wives to meet her and breaking into tears because she fed them well when they were incarcerated. Cornpone, pure and simple.

That said, this is an entertaining novel from one of our best writers. Often seen as a fabulist and an engineer of dark morality tales, McCarthy is first a storyteller. But No Country for Old Men is a minor addition to his work. Rumor has it that this novel came to the publisher at around 600 pages. If that is the case, one can't help but wonder if a truly magnificent work was lost at the cost of pruning with an eye toward the marketplace.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Lent
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, distinguished by the award-winning All the Pretty Horses (1992), contains dark Westerns set against beautiful, bleak landscapes. His newest novel updates his character-driven plots and themes of violence and moral ambiguity. Perhaps the true sign of a master is one whose work raises debate—and this is what No Country has done. Most critics praised McCarthy’s clean, simple prose, though a few thought it too spare for such a graceful stylist. ("The man looked at Chigurh’s eyes for the first time. Blue as lapis. At once glistening and opaque. Like wet stones.") Compelling characters (even women) abound, but Sheriff Bell came off as either smart or too long winded. Finally, the violence seemed gratuitous to some. Even if No Country may be a more minor McCarthy novel, it’s still a terrifying page-turner in the vein of the Trilogy.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

When is evil too much to face?
I have very conflicted feelings about this book. The stark settings and the no nonsense dialogue, the trap that money creates for Moss, the meditations of Sheriff Bell on the nature of life in the 21st century and the fact that he no longer has a place in it, are all pure genius. It is easy to enter this dark world where the tension never lets up and feel your pulse start to race as the strain Moss is under increases with each page and where anyone else may be collateral damage; McCarthy creates this world and you can't wait to escape it as each event brings you closer to the inevitable ending. The problem for me is the embodiment of all this evil is just too inhuman. I don't mean in his behavior, people are capable of great evil, rather it is the "Terminator" like approach he takes; despite wounds and circumstances that would cause a human being to lay low or give up, Chigurh continues on. It just cut into the believability a bit and I found myself being distracted by this machine-like killer, occasionally to the detriment of my involvement in the story. But I always found myself being pulled back in and even though I knew where it would all finish, I was there to the bitter end.

An Engaging and Thought-Provoking Book
"No Country for Old Men" is a unique book. Utilizing a staccato and direct writing style, Cormac McCarthy covers many weighty topics under the umbrella of a disarmingly direct and powerful storyline.

Topics such as life and death, good and evil and choice versus chance are all touched upon over the course of this novel. Beneath the veneer of this action-driven story lie many questions of significant scale and scope. The combination of "big questions" and parsimonious verse make this an engaging and thought-provoking book.

Tough Read
I saw the movie, before I read the book. Saw the book sitting on the library shelf and figured I'd read it to get some understanding and clarification of the movie...NOT! I didn't understand the movie and the book really didn't help. Boy, this was a tough read. Besides the fact that there was limited punctuation, I just couldn't find the meaning of it all. The movie did follow the book very closely, except for the ending, I think, and while I was able to remember movie scenes as I read, a lot of it went WAAAAAAAAAYYY over my head.