No Country For Old Men

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy with his first really popular book, All the Pretty Horses, established himself as one of the best current writers but one with very narrow appeal. This book is terrific, but it continues in the mold of McCarthy's other fiction and most readers won't find it appealing. There are two reasons for this -- his style and his underlying subject matter.

His style is unusual for a modern writer and can be very disconcerting and, to some, offputting. It can best be summed up as "choppy". McCarthy is a big fan of short, often incomplete sentences and, while this makes his book a quick read, it can make the narrative hard to follow. He's also a big fan of unquoted dialog, making it hard to distinguish his voice from his characters. Finally, from a style point of view, he is prone to off stage action. You'll be reading about characters and then, in the next section of the book, discover that something major has happened to them while you weren't looking. You have to pay close attention.

The underlying subject matter in all the McCarthy books that I've read is violence. His books are full of gruesome murders and other acts of violence. In that, he's not that dissimilar to other modern authors. The difference here is that, while not nearly as graphic as somebody like Thomas Harris (Silence of the Lambs), the violence in McCarthy is described casually, nonchalantly. It a lot of ways this makes it far more disturbing.

The basic plot line in No Country for Old Men is that Moss, a young hunter, stumbles on the aftermath of a pitched gun battle that is clearly a Texas drug deal gone bad. While he ignores the drugs he finds, Moss does walk away with a satchel containing over $2M. The book is about all that occurs as the criminals try to find Moss and the money. Ultimately, the book isn't real about crime and violence. You'll have to read it to find out what I mean.