No Country For Old Men: Summary and book reviews of No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, plus links to an excerpt from No Country For Old Men and a biography of Cormac McCarthy.
No Country For Old Men
by
Cormac McCarthy
Hardcover: Jul 2005,
320 pages.
Paperback: Jul 2006,
320 pages.
Set in our own time
along the bloody frontier between Texas and Mexico, this is Cormac McCarthy's
first novel since Cities of the Plain completed his acclaimed,
best-selling Border Trilogy.
Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, instead finds men shot
dead, a load of heroin, and more than $2 million in cash. Packing the money out,
he knows, will change everything. But only after two more men are murdered does
a victim's burning car lead Sheriff Bell to the carnage out in the desert, and
he soon realizes how desperately Moss and his young wife need protection. One
party in the failed transaction hires an exSpecial Forces officer to defend his
interests against a mesmerizing freelancer, while on either side are men
accustomed to spectacular violence and mayhem. The pursuit stretches up and down
and across the border, each participant seemingly determined to answer what one
asks another: how does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?
A harrowing story of a war that society is waging on itself, and an enduring
meditation on the ties of love and blood and duty that inform lives and shape
destinies, No Country for Old Men is a novel of extraordinary resonance
and power.
Book Reviews
Library Journal - Edward B St. John
A made-for-television melodrama filled with guns and muscle cars, this will nonetheless be in demand
Publishers Weekly
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.
Booklist - Allison Block
Starred Review. McCarthy fans will revel in the author's renderings of the raw landscapes of Mexico and the Southwest and the precarious souls scattered along the border that separates the two. Many are the men here who maim in the name of drugs. "If you killed 'em all," says the local sheriff, "they'd have to build an annex onto hell."
The Washington Post - Jeffrey Lent
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.
The New York Times - Walter Kirn
Such sinister high hokum might be ridiculous if McCarthy didn't keep it moving faster than the reader can pause to think about it.
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