I didn't enjoy it, although I appreciated McCarthy's premise for the novel and wish he had built his story in a more believable manner. I didn't find Chigurgh to instill any real feeling of "fear', his charachter just wasn't built up enough, not enough "mood" or description. he just seemed like a cardboard character- The representations of evil in a Steven King's "It" by far imparted a representation of evil embodied. I found him almost likable, and thought the passage of banter between Chigurh and the gas station owner brilliant, the best in the novel. Chigurh's contemp for the robotic, repeating answers was evident.
I also didn't care for the stab at "Texan" vernacular- I highlighted several passages of Bell, which I felt could not be thoughts of the same charachter- sometimes he sounded like a "boy from the hood" and other times like a deep, philosophical thinker with a classical education ( ok, those passages were few and far between). I also found a few passages with phrases uttered by Bell, "That's all I got to say about that", very Forrest Gumpesque...
Little things were irritating, like why didn't Moss and Carla Jean just leve together on Sunday for New York on a plane or something? How did Chugarh get up to the "secure" office accessible only by a 'code"...if there were stairs that he climbed, according to the novel, well, anyone could have accessed the office, but Wells was told the only way in was with a code, that changed with each access.
I plan to read "The Road" and further think on McCarthy. ( )

Another good book by McCarthy. Moss comes across the scene of a drug shooting and finds a briefcase full of money. He realises that he is making the decision of his life, for better or worse, when he takes it. Chigurh is after him and the money, a psychopathic killer with sniper tracking abilities. ( )

Dark again, starting in the middle of nowhere, with empty trucks and dead men. Moss comes buy and finds millions of dollars in one of the trucks. When he decides to keep it, he is hunted by two parties. Will it be possible to survive?

The book is heavy, but once you're in, you want to read more. Nice in between the main story, is the dairy of the sherrif, reflecting on the growing amount of violence in society.

http://boekenwijs.blogspot.com/2009/1... ( )

Wow.

I think you can sum up the entire review with the word above. This book is a lean juicy steak with zero fat. That is the most important thing about this story, that there is zero fluff, because if there was any unneeded junk put into the story, it wouldn't work at all.

I love that McCarthy isn't some literary aficionado somewhere at some university but he is somewhere living in a truck out in West Texas or East New Mexico, writing.

Seeing the movie before the book did not hamper my joy in reading this one bit. What is great about the book is that you get much more of Sheriff Tom Bell, and you get to see his view of things in panorama.

Moss's demise is explained in greater detail, and although it is still not satisfactory for most, it is the way McCarthy intended the book to be, without a tidy ending and without any sense of justice.

There is quite a bit more of Anton Chigurh as well, and he gives out some of his philosophy and world views, especially right before he kills someone. I'm not sure why he is obsessed with the people knowing why he is killing them before he does it, but this is part of his M.O., showing the victims that their life is hopeless if it led to this point.

This book is a fast read, and that is mostly because a good portion of it is dialogue. I'm a sucker for good southern dialogue, and McCarthy's use of the language and dialect is unmatched in this generation.

This is a highly recommended read, despite if you have seen the movie or not, and go into knowing that this is more than a story, but McCarthy's view on civilization and the culture of violence. If you missed his point in the movie, the book won't leave you guessing as to what this all means. We're all in a basket, and we're all heading down south.

I'm going out of my way here to say that I can't remember enjoying a book this much, despite the depression that lingers after reading it. It has jumped up to my top five books of all times list, and may be close to the first. I know that means something to you. ( )

Every choice has a consequence, and sometimes those consequences end up being a larger than live villain named Anton Chigur chasing after you. Made into an Oscar winning movie in 2007, the Coen Brothers made every detail in this story come alive. ( )

Me ha gustado, pero menos que Blood Meridian o The Road.Crítica completa, en catalán, en http://www.xelu.net/html/llibres/llib... ( )

First of McCarthy's books I have ever read and blown away. The character Chigurh has to be one of the meanest baddies ever. Now to read more of Cormac's books and possibly get the movie on hire. ( )

What I liked:
- McCarthy paints a picture of the country and the characters; the chapters early in the book are particularly good.

- The "voice" of the characters, both endearing and real.

- Musings on whether violence in man is "new", and other thoughs from the Sheriff directly in the chapters written from his perspective that are interspersed throught the book. He is far from incompetent, but is simplly overwhelemd and outmatched. His conversations with his old uncle at the end is great.

- Stark and direct. McCarthy does not waste a single word and "brings it", but despite that is still able to develop interesting characters and philosophize.

What I disliked:
- It's certainly not a book for anyone who dislikes violence (or lack of punctuation :-)), the bodies quickly pile up as the story goes on.

- Inexplicable behavior; the first of which is admitted as idiotic by the character ("I'm fixin to go do somethin dumbern hell but I'm goin anyways" ... also "There is no description of a fool, he said, that you fail to satisfy"), but the second of which is just baffling.

Favorite quotes:
"I thought I'd never seen a person like that and it got me to wonderin if maybe he was some new kind."

"I dont even want to know. I dont even want to know what all you been up to.
He sipped the beer and nodded. That'll work, he said.
I think it's better just to not even know even.
You keep runnin that mouth and I'm going to take you back there and screw you.
Big talk.
Just keep it up.
That's what she said.
Just let me finish this beer. We'll see what she said and what she didnt say."

"Where's your truck at?
Gone the way of all flesh. Nothin's forever."

"You think about a job where you have pretty much the same authority as God and there is no requirements put upon you and you are charged with preservin nonexistent laws and you tell me if that's peculiar or not. Because I say that is. Does it work? Yes. Ninety percent of the time. It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it."

"People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they dont deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things. I dont recall that I ever give the good Lord that much cause to smile on me. But he did."

"Nineteen is old enough to know that if you have got somethin that means the world to you it's all that more likely it'll get took away. Sixteen was, for that matter. I think about that.
Bell nodded. I aint a stranger to them thoughts, Carla Jean. Them thoughts is very familiar to me."

"The people I know are mostly just common people. Common as dirt, as the sayin goes. I told her that and she looked at me funny. She thought I was sayin somethin bad about em, but of course that's a high compliment in my part of the world."

"I think if you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would ust bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics."

"You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday dont count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it's made out of. Nothin else."

"I think by the time you've grown you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it."

"You can be patriotic and still believe that some things cost more than they're worth. Ask them Gold Star mothers what they paid and what they got for it. You always pay too much. Particularly for promises."

"You know that Gospel song? We'll understand it all by and by? That takes a lot of faith. You think about him goin over there and dyin in a ditch somewheres. Seventeen year old. You tell me. Because I damn sure dont know."

"This country will kill you in a heartbeat and still people love it." ( )

might be giving Cormac a little too much credit here, as there's this explicit theme of "waaa things are changing waaa I'm old and I wish things wouldn't change" that is pretty ridiculous. Bemoans the death of God. But the detailed descriptions of bodily movements, emphasizing their inaccessible mental state, is brilliant in this book. Cormac's dialogue is also pretty good and feels very realistic, even formally so with his lack of quotation marks. ( )

This is a mess, ain’t it Sherrif?
If it’s not, it’ll do ‘til a mess comes along.

One the strength of The Road, I was more than willing to pick up another McCarthy book, but I rather expected that I would find his brilliance to have been the result of that particular story (being a big fan of post-apocalyptic sci-fi). I was therefore delighted and humbled to realise that McCarthy is a powerful, smart, exciting writer regardless of the subject.

No Country for Old Men is ostensibly a crime thriller – a drug deal gone bad and a civilian on the run with the proceeds, evading both the law and the soul-less Chigurh who is determinedly robotic in his effort to retrieve the money. There is plenty of violence and tension, yet underlying the dance of escape and chase is the sadness, ebbing hope, and philosophical musing of the local Sheriff, Bell, who has watched the world – and his job – change with the seeming evolution of a ‘new kind’ of people and the increasingly senseless brutality that they have spawned.

This book takes a look at how our slice of history is unfolding, and makes the reader confront the obvious: that there is a trend of astonishing, unacceptable (yet seemingly accepted) decline in humanity's reserve of humanity. ( )

sparse, lovely writing. enthralling characters, well-shaped as much by what isn't said as by what is. Very grim, but there's an underlying beauty for all that, like light reflecting harsh off hard and hard-angled surfaces. Sheriff Bell in particular is engagingly philosophical - aged, confronted by difficult truths he can't see any choice but to face up to, he's reminiscent of a world that never really existed.

Well-written, and well worth the time to slide inside McCarthy's trademark writing style. ( )

McCarthy's writing is as spare and dry as the empty, dusty 1980s Texas in which his story is set. The writing feels heavy, and deliberately flat in a way that's compelling instead of off-putting. It's a novel with a high body count and a lot of cold, coldly-described violence, and it's bleak and frightening and depressing, and yet it's really hard to put down. I can't say I *liked* it, as such, but it's an excellent, excellently-written story (even in spite of my general disdain for writers who can't shift themselves to follow the conventions of the English language, like, say, using quotation marks to indicate dialogue) and I'll probably read it again. Although some of the power definitely comes from the sudden, half-unexpected ending, it's the writing itself, the use of words and diction and dialect and the way in which something so spare can still be so clear (the lack of quotation marks is never once an impediment to understanding what's happening) that makes me think this book is brilliant, even though it's absolutely not the kind of book I usually like at all. ( )

This novel is worth studying just to understand how McCarthy constructed it. Yes it is violent and hopeless, but it is also riveting and compelling.

My understanding of the construction of the novel is that McCarthy took the novel apart, separated it into two parts, and put it back together. The compelling part is a linear telling of the story of the stolen money and the chase. In this part the writing is restricted to only what can be seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelled – the senses. There are no reflections by the characters, no feelings, no rhetorical questions, and no flashbacks. Essentially all of that has been removed and placed in the other part of the novel, in which the character of the Sheriff addresses the reader. There is no action in this part, only a discussion by the Sheriff in first person of his life as a sheriff and his feelings about what he has observed. The two parts alternate, with the Sheriffs first person musings in italics.

It works, very well. Makes me want to try to imitate it. ( )

More enjoyable than the movie as you are actually doing something while you are reading. Provides a bit more details than the movie but not much. Synchronizing with the cadence of the author was difficult for the first third of the book. ( )

Interesting read but not quite as good as The Road. ( )

A little like in cold blood except not true ( )

This is a dry, haunting piece, the voice of each character short and foreboding. McCarthy has a knack for dialect, and it is impossible not to hear these people in your head. With an abundance of murder and violence, there are very few gory details to disgust the reader. The killings are described matter of factly, and go as quickly as they have come. This novel is like a flat, dusty desert at night--every shadow shelters death, but there is no choice but to keep stumbling forward, hoping that things won't end up the way they're destined to. ( )

I saw the Coen brothers cinematic interpetation of this books a few months ago, and have been wanting to read it ever since. The movie was really good, and followed the book very closely. This book kept me on the edge of mye seat, despite the fact that I knew what was going to happen. Llewlyn's desperate flight and Chigurh's endlessly determinded pursuit makes for a very exciting and nerveracking read. Chigurh is a very interesting character; his gruesome, cold and calculating nature is oddly intriguing and fascinating. I loved the relationship between Llewlyn and Sue Ellen; their interaction and conversations was heartwarming.

A quick, exciting and enjoyable read! ( )

I don’t think this novel had the same sense of sweeping epic as McCarthy’s masterpiece Blood Meridian, but the parallels between the two novels are clear. Even in the modern era, the West is a place of violent inevitability, a place that breeds shootouts and wars in its rocky soil.

The novel opens with a young man, Llewelyn Moss, stumbling across the grisly remains of a drug-related shootout in the Texas back country, where he finds and takes a satchel full of money. He then makes a crucial mistake — a mistake fueled by compassion or perhaps guilt — and that sets into motion a chain of events. He becomes hunted by an inhuman killer, and they in turn are being tracked by a small-town Texas sheriff, who is becoming more and more aware of his futile role in the war that these dark forces are waging around him. There is no law in Texas, and the drug runners and their customers are just modern-day equivalents of the Indian hunters and renegade soldier-cowboy-outlaws of an earlier time. ( )

Chilling tale of a heartless man and the law ( )

No Country For Old Men is a novel that describes what happens when a man named Llewelyn Moss finds two million dollars and heroin among dead bodies, and decides to take it. Not only does Moss decide to take this money, but he finds himself targeted by a hitman named Anton Chigurh who will kill anybody in his way to get to Moss. Chigurh has such a reputation that the police department is trying to protect Moss and his family from him. Sheriff Bell, who is on the investigation, tries frantically to resolve the case and save Moss. The remaining question are: who will be successful? who will live? who will die?
No Country For Old Men fits nicely into the "Who's the Hero?" category because of all of the intertwining story lines. You have Moss, who the reader wants to see live, you have Chigurh, who you want to see retrieve the money, and you have Bell, who you want to unravel the whole mystery. It is because of this that the reader wants to see everyone come out the winner, which is impossible from the very beginning of the novel. While reading this novel, I often caught myself thinking "Wait! About 5 minutes ago I wanted you to die, and now I want to see you succeed? What?!?" I think that Cormac McCarthy does a good job with making all of the characters a part of one big personality, which makes it easy for the reader to relate to all of the characters.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is in the mood for an action packed, suspenseful novel. Cormac McCarthy writes in a way that you can tell what is going to happen seconds before it does, but at the same time make the novel mysterious. Keep in mind, that while reading this book, you must pay attention because McCarthy does not use quotation marks, which often makes dialogue very difficult to follow (no "he said" or "she said"). That being said, I think that the book is a good read, and anyone that is looking for a violent, action packed novel, would love to read this book. ( )

A grim, pessimistic view of a world headed for a dystopian future. See the review of the Coen Brothers' film of this novel at

http://filmsufi.blogspot.com/2009/01/... ( )

http://tyranist.blogspot.com/2009/01/... ( )

Is Chigurh not one of the horsemen of the apocalypse? This devastatingly good read depressed me to the point where afterward I needed to read Eoin Colfer just to make life more hopeful! I applaud the Fateful use of the 'Cattle Slaughter gun' to dispatch members of the American Public, a coin toss 'the best I can do' as to life and death outcomes. I was mesmerized and appalled throughout most of this story. ( )

It’s McCarthy, what else can I say. Liked it and read it very, very quickly. Haven’t thought much else about it since. Like The Road more. That one still haunts me. I could’ve seen the movie first and it wouldn’t have changed my feeling about the book – whatever that indicates about the former or latter I’m not readily sure. I like McCarthy for the emotions he evokes. But the sensibility is always absent. It’s always an abject and devoid reality I get in his novels. He’s a great writer though, and this does little to alter that. Still, not much to remember here other than style and a semi-plausible world view on fate and control. ( )