No Country for Old Men
 |
| Picador Press |
Cormac McCarthy
2005
2005
“I always thought when I got older that God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn't. I don't blame him. If I was him I'd have the same opinion about me that he does.”
As I frantically and purposelessly rush to catch up with my surplus of finished but yet-to-be-reviewed books before adding more to them- though I've just started reading George R.R. Martin's A Feast for Crows and it's about six million pages long- I found myself returning to the polarizing figure of Cormac McCarthy. When I use the word polarizing I'm referring to my varying opinions on the first two McCarthy novels I've read; The Road was a superb modern novel, a slice of thoughtful post-apocalyptic fiction written fairly recently and winner of the Pulitzer prize. Blood Meridian, however, was written twenty years earlier than The Road, back when McCarthy was mainly known for very bloody, and very gritty Western/cowboy fiction.
I did not like Blood Meridian at all, which left me feeling rather apprehensive about starting McCarthy's third very famous book; No Country for Old Men (famously adapted by the Coen brothers two years later into an Academy Award Best Picture winner that I should probably watch some day). I honestly wasn't expecting to enjoy it because it's another Western, albeit a modern one, and I think the combination of typical accented, regional Western dialogue with McCarthy's regular decision to abandon regular speech punctuation can create a frustrating experience for a reader not attuned to it, like me.
With my expectation of enjoyment pretty low, I was still surprised that I ended up liking it. Not a huge amount, but I liked it. In hindsight the key to this was I hadn't realised that No Country was a lot more contemporary than Blood Meridian. Set in the present day, No Country revolves around a small cast of tough, gritty and very western characters all caught up in the aftermath of a drug deal gone badly wrong. Tough, gritty Westerner Llewellyn Moss accidentally stumbles upon the the crime scene, where amongst a collection of bullet-ridden bodies and heroin he discovers a bag containing $2 million dollars. After some internal debate, he takes it (and spends much of the novel re-evaluating and regretting his decision). He also sees and speaks to the only survivor, who is mortally wounded, and Moss later returns with some water for the man. He's already dead though, and his friends have turned up to investigate. Moss barely escapes the scene, and the chase that comprises the rest of the book is on.
Moss has a charismatic and introspective detective on his trail, as well as a psychopathic hit-man, who essentially exist as an angel and a devil both fighting for his soul. Moss is an ambiguous, unpredictable character who certainly isn't evil, but is easily capable of making the wrong decision. The set-up from then on is actually kind of simple and easy to follow, as the reader follows the inevitable fate of each of the three main characters in a standard-length novel. The contemporary nature of the novel, including the writing style, character portrayal and (importantly for me) the dialogue was far more typical than the genre-specific style of Blood Meridian. I'm probably making myself out to seem like an idiot here, but I can't be bothered to mentally invest in a genre and style I get nothing out of, but No Country only takes what it needs from the classic Western genre rather than all of it, which made it far more interesting for me. Recommended to most fans of contemporary fiction, particularly if you like grim, gritty and introspective. I'll have to watch the film next.
I did not like Blood Meridian at all, which left me feeling rather apprehensive about starting McCarthy's third very famous book; No Country for Old Men (famously adapted by the Coen brothers two years later into an Academy Award Best Picture winner that I should probably watch some day). I honestly wasn't expecting to enjoy it because it's another Western, albeit a modern one, and I think the combination of typical accented, regional Western dialogue with McCarthy's regular decision to abandon regular speech punctuation can create a frustrating experience for a reader not attuned to it, like me.
With my expectation of enjoyment pretty low, I was still surprised that I ended up liking it. Not a huge amount, but I liked it. In hindsight the key to this was I hadn't realised that No Country was a lot more contemporary than Blood Meridian. Set in the present day, No Country revolves around a small cast of tough, gritty and very western characters all caught up in the aftermath of a drug deal gone badly wrong. Tough, gritty Westerner Llewellyn Moss accidentally stumbles upon the the crime scene, where amongst a collection of bullet-ridden bodies and heroin he discovers a bag containing $2 million dollars. After some internal debate, he takes it (and spends much of the novel re-evaluating and regretting his decision). He also sees and speaks to the only survivor, who is mortally wounded, and Moss later returns with some water for the man. He's already dead though, and his friends have turned up to investigate. Moss barely escapes the scene, and the chase that comprises the rest of the book is on.
Moss has a charismatic and introspective detective on his trail, as well as a psychopathic hit-man, who essentially exist as an angel and a devil both fighting for his soul. Moss is an ambiguous, unpredictable character who certainly isn't evil, but is easily capable of making the wrong decision. The set-up from then on is actually kind of simple and easy to follow, as the reader follows the inevitable fate of each of the three main characters in a standard-length novel. The contemporary nature of the novel, including the writing style, character portrayal and (importantly for me) the dialogue was far more typical than the genre-specific style of Blood Meridian. I'm probably making myself out to seem like an idiot here, but I can't be bothered to mentally invest in a genre and style I get nothing out of, but No Country only takes what it needs from the classic Western genre rather than all of it, which made it far more interesting for me. Recommended to most fans of contemporary fiction, particularly if you like grim, gritty and introspective. I'll have to watch the film next.
No comments:
Post a Comment