REVIEW: No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy

• Year first released:  2005
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780375706677
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Knopf Doubleday
• My rating (out of 5):  3.5

I don't often read multiple books in a row by the same author (unless they're a series, but even then, I usually take breaks in between entries). But, for some reason, after setting down Child of God, I just wasn't ready to step away from Cormac McCarthy yet.

I actually haven't gotten around to the 2007 movie No Country for Old Men yet. Now that I've read the book, I'm quite interested in seeing it, though. It's certainly a story which I'd love to see come to life. There's a raw realness to the entire ordeal that truly begs to be on display visually, not just on the page.

In fact, I have to admit that I am highly surprised by what I'm about to say, especially since this is Cormac McCarthy we're talking about here (and you know how much I enjoy McCarthy), but...I'm inclined to think No Country would actually be a better movie than it was a book.

...no, really: I can't believe I feel that way about a McCarthy book.

Though the writing in No Country is still head and shoulders above just about any other author writing today, I found it to be his weakest book stylistically. (In fact, though every other aspect of the book is better than All The Pretty Horses, I'd even say Horses was written better than No Country.)

More than once, I had a bit of trouble envisioning a scene, understanding the action, sometimes even figuring out who was speaking. (Admittedly, this last gripe is due in part to the fact that McCarthy doesn't use quotation marks for his dialogue, but it's never been as problematic for me before as it was this time around.) Several times I had to re-read small sections in order to get a better grasp on what was going on.

As well - and very importantly - McCarthy spent significantly less time/words describing the setting of No Country than any of his other books I've read. Gone are the simple, powerful sentence fragments and metaphors that give us the evocative, earthy connections to the worlds McCarthy creates in each of his novels. Though these sorts of images aren't, per se, necessary for a book to work, they've always been a particular highlight in McCarthy's writing - enough so that their absence was starkly noticed here.

There is much to praise in No Country as well, though, and I don't want to tip the scales too far in the wrong direction. The characters of No Country were all incredibly vivid and realistic. The main antagonist of the story, Chigurh, was especially powerful and intricate. Though I can't in good conscience root for him, all the same, I appreciated his ideals and his perspective at least as much as the main protagonist - likely more. A few times in the book we're treated to Chigurh's ideas about the situation - or even just about life generally - and these were, without a doubt, the most fascinating, haunting bits of the book.

Though the plot wasn't terribly complex, it was an appropriate fit for the mood, the time, the characters. If the story itself had gotten too much more entangled, it would have risked alienating the lifelike people who populate No Country. Better that McCarthy left the story simple to contrast with the complexity of the moods, persons, and ideals involved.

I suppose that, to be perfectly fair, No Country might deserve a 4 more than a 3.5. It's hard not to stack it up against other McCarthy books, though - in which case, I feel just barely disappointed enough to deduct half a point.* I'm still quite pleased to have read it, though, and much more interested in seeing the movie than I was before reading the book.




*For more of an explanation on this thought process, feel free to check out my post from a few months back Having High Expectations of Creators.