Name: Vojtech's review of No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Item: No Country for Old Men
Rating: 5
Author: Vojtech

Cormac McCarthy

Stumbling upon a bloody massacre, a cache of heroin, and more than two million in cash during a hunting trip, Llewelyn Moss removes the money, a decision that draws him and his young wife into the middle of a violent confrontation.

No Country for Old Men

Bart Veldhuijsen 

Een van de dingen die je bij het ouder worden beseft is dat niet iedereen samen oud met jou gaat worden.

Vojtech

I had seen the movie, yet the book was a real page-turner that I read in just a few days. McCarthy proves that he is a masterful writer, using simple, direct language to create a complex picture.

Lucas Dietrich

Michael Springer

There are some cliche things that reviewers like to say about exciting stuff: riveting. A tour-de-force. The next Twilight. I could say all of that about No Country For Old Men (barring the Twilight thing), but I won't. 

What I'll say instead is that I breezed through this 300-page novel in about a day and a half. As with all of Cormac McCarthy's books, the writing is very good and the characters are engaging. Even though I had already seen the movie, I really really wanted to know what was going to happen. 

If you haven't read anything by Cormac McCarthy, do so. "All the Pretty Horses" would be a good one to start with, although it is an uncharacteristic book for him. "No Country For Old Men" would also be a good starting place, even though it might be his only book set in the present day. 

A big theme that runs through his work is man's struggle against his own inherent evil. And, when I say "man," I do mean "man": McCarthy's works contain women, but male characters seem to be the primary driving force of evil. 

In No Country For Old Men, Llewelyn Moss is in the desert hunting antilope and stumbles across the scene of a drug deal gone awry. Bodies are everywhere. He finds a suitcase full of strapped hundreds that comes out to more than two million. He takes it. He runs.

An elderly sheriff follows his trail, hoping to convince him to turn the money in. 

A mercenary also follows his trail. This mercenary has no enemies because he doesn't leave anyone alive who might become one. 

This book has all the tension of a thriller, but it is more than just a fun ride. It is also pretty damned disturbing. This book is anything but optimistic. 

In this book, McCarthy's conservative politics are more obvious than the others I've read by him. Because of this, I cringed during a few overtly political passages. But, politics weren't prevalent enough in the book to make it unenjoyable. So, I highly recommend this riveting tour-de-force of a page-turner. Just don't read it when you're in the mood for something cheerful.

Verwarrend geschreven, maar het verhaal en einde is heel goed

Dave | Storyphoria

Was a big fan of the film already and finally had a chance to read the book. It's amazing how much the book is different in some parts and then almost word for word the same as the film in many others. Excellent read, and a rare case of neither the movie or the book being better than the other. I think they hold up together extremely well.

Ryan LaFerney

Commanding and accessible, No Country for Old Men is a bleak chronicle of murder, revenge and implacable fate. What Cormac McCarthy did for the Western, here he has done for the crime novel. Cormac has some nasty fun here and writes like a someone who is set afire with the ghost of Faulkner whispering in his ear.

No Country for Old Men is, in many ways, a straightforward crime drama. It follows a man who stumbles onto a drug deal gone bad and tries to get away with a case full of money as a hitman and a sheriff both pursue him...leading to disastrous consequences.

This book is built around the premise that any one of us can think we are making a good decision only to later find out the depths of how bad that decision actually was. Llewelyn Moss chose to take a suitcase full of money from a drug deal gone bad, thinking he would never get caught…and it all goes downhill from there. It's also a brutal meditation on the nature of fate. story is very cinematic, a slow and complex chase with three grades of characters: good (the sheriff), bad (Chirgurh and assorted drug traders), mixed (Moss, a loving husband and veteran who did take the money). And the Sheriff, it would seem, is in over his head - in new territory. 

 McCarthy writes a hard, cold, mean prose almost devoid of heroes, even the Sherriff can't save the day.

Riveting, commanding, and brutal, No Country for Old Men is a crime novel of Texas noir that you will not be able to put down until the very last line.

Harry

Jayme Bosio

I was impressed by how well the movie followed the book, and how well Tommy Lee Jones captured the character of Sheriff Bell. This is one of the first books I've read in a long time where I wanted to pull my car off the side of the road to finish reading it. It's a quick read, but it's not an easy one. It really makes you think about humanity and the road we're taking.

Ashlyn

Nik and I listened to the Audible version over the course of several road trips. Narration was great, style was perfect, and the story was extremely entertaining to me (especially because it was slow-moving).

Suspenseful, scary, and full of truth and wisdom about the world we live in. Definitely falta le to todays culture. The ending was lowkey confusing, but beside that 10/10

Hannah Montgomery

McCarthy likes his characters of unstoppable evil. The only smart way is to get out of the way. Which is hard if you are seasoned cop who spent his entirely life protecting people.

 and lot more "mainstream". The movie adaptation is great too. Even though I still have nightmares about Anton Chigurh's haircut.

McCarthy likes his characters of unstoppable evil. The only smart way is to get out of the way. Which is hard if you are seasoned cop who spent his entirely life protecting people.

It's different from The Road and Blood Meridian and lot more "mainstream". The movie adaptation is great too. Even though I still have nightmares about Anton Chigurh's haircut.

Fraser Simons

Amazing. The added context does make it better than the movie, which is also quite good. But this is a much more intimate experience and the tension feels much higher.The audible narrator was very good as well, one of the best I’ve heard.

Geoffrey Landward

Fantastic. Be warned that it is violent, but McCarthy does not write violence to simply be violent; this novel is a discerning investigation into evil, morality, and a diminishing world of right and wrong. Told from the perspective of an aging sheriff, McCarthy demonstrates a keen understanding of life and people through ruminations that begin each chapter. The prose is sparse but beautiful. More remarkable is McCarthy's use of dialect (texan to be specific). The language is like its own character - "I think that when the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be there yet. It don't move about from place to place and it don't change from time to time." This book is another reason why Cormac McCarthy is quickly climbing up the ladder of my favorite authors.

Madhuri Sridhara

3.5 rounded off

When I told my friend I was reading this book and for some reason she asked me if this "was the movie with the two queer old men". I simply told her this was about drugs.

Neither of us were entirely right as it turned out. It's as the title says.

I'd read the first few pages back in 2012 or 2013 but stopped because of the grammar and lack of quotation marks. This time that didn't bother me too much. Mostly because I was adamant on reading it. The violence of the book had stayed with me and I was strangely hooked. 

While this was a fast read, I couldn't always keep track of conversations and characters. The choppy dialogue and meandering plot is made up however by the Sheriff's powerful monologue. That and Chigurh will definitely stay with me.

Drew Santiago

Such a well written book you can picture every moment clearly! The movie is played scene for scene and does the book it’s justice! I’m glad I read this! 

Nick Ringwood

3.5

Started off really strong, and I liked the descriptions and dialogue a bit, as well as the self-reflection and unique take on the world,
But the constant repetitions of motel rooms and constant descriptions of little actions was neat at first, but started to wear on me by the end.

Jordan Card

The only reason i rated this somewhat lower is because its not the kind of writing im typically into, so i had to remind myself to pick it up. I mostly read this because there was a long time back before when i wasnt reading a lot and i want to fill in blanks of books i may have read during the time i wasnt reading. I was surprised how much i liked this, because i like I said before i dont typically go for a lot of physical descriptions in things i choose to read, but there was a lot to think about and i enjoyed a change. Sometimes a writer is simply good at writing and you want to read their book!

Edit: i had to upgrade my star rating because i just gave a court of mist and fury 3 stars

Shafel McDowall

Subtracted a star for the random racism sprinkled throughout the book. But holyshit was this book a ride.

Maytal

No Country for Old Men (MTI) (Vintage International)

Trevor Berrett

As compelling and thrilling as anything you can get, this book is also a thoughtful look at evil and how it affects us.
Most of the action in the book concerns Moss's run from Chigurh since Moss stumbled upon $2.5 million in a drug deal gone terribly bad. The action is great. However, more affecting, though more subtle, is Sheriff Bell's ruminations about these events in his past. Each chapter begins with some of Bell's first-person memories. And like most excellent writers, McCarthy shows the philosophy not by what Bell says but how Bell feels. 
Some critics were disappointed in the ending, perhaps understandably. It is not your typical thriller, though the first two-thirds seem to be headed in that direction. McCarthy's themes, however, would not be brought out if this ran in typical thriller fashion. Perhaps the book would have been more satisfying on its first reading, but then the book would be drug down to just another thriller. The ending, in my opinion, is perfect for its purpose. As a reader, I must admit that I wanted what McCarthy did not write, but as an admirer of McCarthy, I appreciate his control, his lack of self-indulgence, and his ability to thwart his readers' expectations and still make the book feel like it could not have been written in any other way.
Not as good as The Road, but I liked it as much as I liked All the Pretty Horses. Also, it is much more readable than Blood Meridian which I would say preceeded some of the themes revisited in No Country.

No country for old men

Amber Laha

I don't particularly understand this book or the ending, if you could even call it such. It kept me on the edge of the seat until he did that thing that I didn't care for, especially since he didn't have us there when it happened, but after the fact. 

This was an easier read than I expected considering the writing, which was disjointed and lazy. Lazy in the fact that, although the style was good and fitting to the story, the fact that he didn't care to put the apostrophes and commas and periods for no better reason than the fact that he didn't want to was annoying. That kind of thing had nothing to do with style, but laziness. 

I guess I enjoyed it and will read his other books(The Road in particular), but I felt frustrated with the ending, as I already pointed out. I am not sure what his point was... that everything is futile. That death comes to you no matter what you do to outrun it? The fact that it made me think gets a boost in its rating.

Riley Young

I've been curious about Cormac McCarthy for some time now, as he's been fairly popular and actually looks like he isn't a hack as so many wildly popular authors seem to be. The movie based on this book has also been something I've been wanting to see for some time. 

I generally won't read the book after seeing the movie, so in most cases if I want to do at least one I'll read the book first. In this case, I watched the movie first. Having seen several other movies by the Coens, I was curious to see how exactly they had adapted a book for the screen, so I then read the book.

In most cases, this was the most faithful movie adaptation I have ever seen. Of course, a few things had to be cut out and switched around, but altogether there were only a few instances where something from the book just plain didn't happen in the movie. 

As for the book itself, after I got used to the odd punctuation (McCarthy never uses quotation marks for dialogue and rarely any other punctuation beyond periods), I found it to be quite readable. There are few descriptions of characters, which is fine by me, although having seen the film I did tend to fill in the blanks with the actors. 

There were a few moments in the writing which I wish could have been translated to film, but of course narrative of characters' thoughts can rarely be brought to film without being awkward.

The only complaint I had is that a few things in the book struck me as unlikely in a 1980 setting, but other than that it was well-crafted.

Altogether, I would recommend this book to people who don't mind books without "happy" endings. But I never recommend books, anyway.

I.m. ruzz

No Country for Old Men may be his most accessible work, readable for it's core story (which is a sort of western pulp) by most people. My mother, whose tastes are broad but hardly refined could read this novel and enjoy it. 

That said, it is also the work of a brilliant mind, ruminating between words and pages at a mild pace (hidden beneath the sheets, as it were) throughout, on the nature of good, evil, manhood, right, wrong, and, typical of his works, fate. 

It's base is a story of murder, death, greed & the foibles of man, it's heart is a commentary on the dangers of belief in ideals (without reason, or logic) and the costs sometimes paid over a life for mistakes made well before we're able to avoid them. 

there are some genius ironies buried deep in the stark, straightforward text. 

the movie, which has everyone talking was a piece of very well made fluff when placed beside this meaty, yet surprisingly thin, book. Confirmation of how the film pales beside the book should come from asking someone who saw the film what relation title of the film had to the film. It has none. Whereas, the book is in it's fullest sense an outright fulfillment of the title.

Vojtech &
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

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