No Country For Old Men Book Review

Alfred S.

The novel No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, is jam packed with action, love, death, and insanity. This book mac McCarthy, is simply put, a thriller. This book set in the 1980’s on the Mexican, Texas border follows the travels of a local Texan, Llewelyn Moss, who somehow found himself caught in a drug war, an old Sheriff, and a maniac killer. Moss must learn how to survive, and become a more sneaky and conniving person then he thought he ever could be if he hopes to survive his journey.

Through all the chaos of the novel, it is a fairly simple plot. In short, the characters are engulfed in greed. Llewelyn Moss, a simple country man who has a profession as a welder. He has a nineteen-year-old wife, and they live happily together in a trailer park. Llewelyn went out hunting one day for antelope but instead, stumbled upon a drug deal that had gone horribly wrong. There were dead bodies littered across the area and a man dead with a brief case in his arms. He takes the brief case and looks inside of it and finds two million dollars. He takes the brief case and runs for it. A psychotic hit man is hired to retrieve the money by any means necessary. His name is Chigurh, and he is the antagonist, the villain, and a heartless murderer. This insane man begins to hunt down Llewelyn across the vast lands of Texas and Mexico. When Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, an old battle tested war veteran, hears about this psycho and how he had recently murdered one of his deputies and is now hunting down a resident of his county, he buckles up and begins to hunt down the hunter.  The journeys of these three characters are long and agonizing, but in the end, somebody has to give.

Cormac’s depiction of the journey of those three men hunting and fleeing from each other across the present day Wild West is full of action, love, and death. McCarthy takes an old western flawed justice theme and positions it into a more present day setting. I found the ending of the book to be somewhat surprising, but I did not enjoy it that much. McCarthy’s writing was spectacular with his amazing use of imagery, and his ability to write a story that keeps you on the edge of your seat. I truly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anybody who genuinely likes action. I read Cormac McCarthy’s novel All The Pretty Horses last year for our reading assignment and thought it was pretty good, but I definitely feel that this book was even better. There is a movie that is based off of this novel but I must advise people to read the book first. The film would be hard to follow if you have never read the book, and I thought the movie was just not as up to par as the book. But I recommend watching the movie once you have finished the book. Cormac has once again written a brilliant novel and has failed to disappoint.