No Country for Old Men (Picador Collection)

1980, the Texas/Mexico border. Llewellyn Moss is out hunting one day when he stumbles across a drug deal gone wrong: dead bodies and bags of heroin everywhere and over two million dollars in a bag. Moss makes the fateful decision to take the money and run and so begins a deadly cat and mouse game with a cast that includes psychopathic killer Anton Chigurh, a bounty hunter called Carson Wells, and elderly and world-weary Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (what amazing names!) who watches the destruction unfold. Will Moss escape with the cash or pay the ultimate price?Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men is a neo-western thriller that's a completely engrossing read. Moss' flight from his pursuers is really exciting because McCarthy writes Moss as a competent and intelligent man able to evade his pursuers and remain one step ahead. But his main antagonist, the brutal Chigurh, is extremely adept at picking up the trail and relentlessly keeps after Moss. Both characters make No Country an enormously enthralling story to follow.Chigurh's character is by far the standout of the book. A quietly vicious killer who's deeply intense and driven in a way that makes him appear more like a force of nature than a man, McCarthy has created a character for the ages with Chigurh on par with Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lector. Chigurh stole every scene he appeared in from when we first meet him in police custody, murdering his way to freedom, to the final chilling scene. Every interaction he has with any character is immediately tense as we as readers never know when he'll decide to kill - he flips coins to make the choice for him - and the air pistol he uses to silently murder his victims was an inspired choice showing his contempt for his fellow man, viewing them as the cattle the gun was originally designed to kill.Sheriff Bell is the character I would say I was the most conflicted about because I both liked and disliked him for the same reason. Bell is the most cliched character in the cast - an old cop on the verge of retirement - but McCarthy writes his voice beautifully. The book is structured so that Bell will monologue for a page or two in italics before the chapter reverts back to an omniscient, unintrusive narrator. Bell's monologues typically run along two topics for the entirety of the book: 1) the world today isn't like the world he knew growing up - it's a darker, more violent world, and 2) he sure does love his wife Loretta and boy is he lucky to have met her.The monologues become repetitive after a while but serve to break up and work effectively as a contrast to the action. And while what Bell says sounds wise in a down-home kinda way, they're not really: the world is full of violent people? Is that a revelation to anyone? And all that stuff about his wife is corny as hell. However the way he says it is written with such an evocative sing-song quality that sounds genuinely heartfelt and lyrical, I honestly didn't mind reading it. Given the number of awards McCarthy's won, it's a moot point to say he has a knack for choosing the right words, but he really does and these often mask rather insubstantial material or gussie it up to seem cleverer than it is.And here's the thing about No Country: even though it's written by a critically acclaimed writer who's won the Pulitzer, this is not an intellectual book - but it is intelligently written. It's not profound, it's not overly complex, it doesn't even have anything much to say: it's simply a genre novel but it's a really well written genre novel. It's refreshingly straightforward and accessible from a writer who might be more concerned with literary complexity to the detriment of plot, given his reputation as a literary writer. Thankfully that's not the case and his direct approach is a brilliant choice as it suits the characters and story perfectly. It might seem more literary because McCarthy eschews quotation marks for dialogue - hell, he doesn't even tell you which character is speaking! - but it's a thriller nonetheless albeit of a higher quality than the usual thriller fare.This style means that the novel shoots along at an incredible pace, the reader drawn into this lethal chase and the pages flying by as a result. It helps that the dialogue is written in a stripped down, almost screenplay-like manner and it's interesting that McCarthy these days has taken to writing only screenplays over novels - No Country is indicative of the direction he'd take as a writer in the years after it was published.The only real problem I had with the story was the way a major character is dealt with towards the end. They're killed off-page and in such a tossed-off way that I had to go back and re-read the last appearance of that character to see if I'd missed a detail - nope. It's daring to so abruptly kill off a major player and resolve the main story in such a sudden manner that could go either way for the reader but for me, while I appreciated the uniquely different way to conclude the story, I was definitely unsatisfied with how events played out.No Country for Old Men is an extremely violent but compulsively readable neo-western that's genuinely thrilling and features one of the great modern literary villains in Anton Chigurh. It's a classy pulp novel that tells its story well making it a very enjoyable read despite its rather bleak outlook.

I have read many novels by Cormac McCarthy and this is the latest, after a gap of a few years since reading 'The Road'. This novel is a relatively recent work and is probably better known in it's cinematic version, adapted by the marvellous Coen brothers, which was rightly garnered with all the top Oscars in 2008 and which I saw before reading the book.This excellent novel sits in the comparatively short section of McCarthy's works, (unusually) has several clearly defined sub-plots and will be far more 'accessible' to most as whilst it has the core identifiable characteristics of McCarthy's writing style, it largely omits the use of lengthy sections of foreign language and unpunctuated sentences for which he is 'better known' in earlier works.I read this book after seeing the fantastic film 'version' (and I use that term entirely intentionally) and was struck with how markedly the tone of each differed - there is a huge opportunity to be 'distracted' by the compelling action which occurs in the story (and which, necessarily, drives the film presentation) and hence miss what I believe is the true plot behind McCarthy's prose.This difference is perfectly demonstrated when you read the (intentionally vague) story introduction printed on the back of the book and quoted in the Amazon description, repeated below :"Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, stumbles upon a transaction gone horribly wrong. Finding bullet-ridden bodies, several kilos of heroin, and a caseload of cash, he faces a choice - leave the scene as he found it, or cut the money and run. Choosing the latter, he knows, will change everything. And so begins a terrifying chain of events, in which each participant seems determined to answer the question that one asks another: how does a man decide in what order to abandon his life ?"It emphasises my point since it omits any mention of who I believe are the true main characters of this tale : the 'hitman' (Anton Chigurh) and Sheriff (Tom Bell) 'pursuers', with the latter being the less colourful but actually more 'dominant' of the two; this story nevertheless does have 3 important threads....And I think my point is proven since we are first presented with some musings of an as yet unknown character, THEN introduced to the soon-to-be pursuer Chigurh - as he deals with the aftermath of his handiwork which then get Moss involved (so it is he that is actually introduced last of the 3).So, those first few pages already show us perfectly how things are on different levels, since the book is partly written in firsthand, italicised, chapters to give us the thoughts of Sheriff Bell (who is that initially unknown character) but also/predominantly in thirdhand, as events are described to us and we are let into the minds of Moss and the eventual pursuer (a VERY unpleasant place to go !); but crucially the thoughts of Moss are stated to us, whereas we can only learn about whatever thoughts the enigmatic/ruthless/weird pursuer might have through his verbal exchanges with others.....This story is clearly actually about the Sheriff, with the hugely dominant plot being something of a MacGuffin - the weighty sections of the book are given over to Bell airing his thoughts to us.So, I believe that this work has to be considered in terms of both 'what happens' (emphasised in the film) AND 'what is it about' (emphasised in the book), as the answers to those 2 questions are quite different.Both are hugely compelling and, largely, attractive considerations as much of what occurs is so gripping and the 3 main personalities so incredibly intriguing. You will try and sympathise/understand the Sheriff, root for Moss and (certainly in my case) be completely, totally and utterly captivated by the chilling nature of the odious Chigurh as each follows their path through that 'MacGuffin' series of events.It is easy to see why the Coens snapped-up the opportunity to adapt this literary masterpiece for the screen. The contrast in presentation 'emphasis' is understandable, since the film would be rather droll for many if it contained ALL the musings of Sheriff Bell which feature so prominently in the book.The reason I have included so many references to the film is not just that I don't want to reveal too much about this superb overall story written by McCarthy to spoil things for you. It's also because if you enjoy this book as much as I did, and are similarly captivated by some of the most intriguing characters you will ever read about, then experiencing them in the superb film portrayals will enhance your experience all the more.