Hello Beautiful People! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I got into a book I’ve heard a lot about No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. I’ve checked out one of McCarthy’s other books in the past The Road, which definitely made me want to check out some of his other books. No Country For Old Men had great reviews, so I thought it would be a good #2 to check out, I definitely wasn’t disappointed, so let’s get into it!
Main Characters:
- Llewelyn Moss: A veteran who stumbles upon a bloody scene and makes a decision that sends him and those he loves into the middle of a mess he isn’t ready to deal with
- Carson Wells: Is tasked with getting back what Llewelyn took, but is also being hunted himself
- Anton Chigurh: Is not the average hitman, tasks himself as being a cleanup man for criminals, but does his deeds with an air of righteousness that makes him comfortable with being a killer
- Sheriff Bell: Stumbles on a scene seemingly caused by drug dealers, but gets a clue that someone local may be involved in the mess
My Review
Going into this book I really wasn’t sure what to think. No Country For Old Men in terms of plot is such a switch up from The Road, so I was curious to see how McCarthy would tackle the topic of the drug world. This was such an interesting book. The style it’s written in, and the pace of the characters, as opposed to the pace of the plot, was very captivating.
No Country For Old Men follows the different people who get pulled into the mess of Llewelyn Moss when he makes the decision to stop somewhere he shouldn’t have. With elements of thrill and suspense, it’s a hard book to put down. I gave No Country For Old Men an 8/10 rating. The only downfall in the book for me personally was the amount of characters. I got a bit lost at some points with how many people show up in this book and at one point I kept getting Wells and Chigurh mixed up since they were kind of doing the same thing in the book despite Wells being hired to do the job and Chigurh not. I have to say though that this is very much a personal issue. I just tend to get things mixed up or not have enough space in my little brain to handle as many characters as different authors will put in their books. Despite this slight downfall for me the rest of the book was fantastic and I would definitely recommend checking this one out.
The largest theme I noticed in this book was the factor of how money or financial gain can drive people to do some pretty crazy things. When Llewelyn stumbles upon a drug run gone bad, he doesn’t drive away or call the police like any normal person, he knows where drugs are money is, and decides to take something for himself. What Llewelyn doesn’t realize when he takes the money from the hands of these dead men, is that the people whose money it is would not be willing to give it up so easily. Llewelyn’s desperation to keep the money for himself creates a chain of events that put himself, the ones he loves, and innocent people at risk. Furthermore, the men whose money it was originally will stop at nothing, and will kill everyone in their way to get back what is there’s.
Llewelyn made my skin crawl with the decisions he made and the way he went about things. Look, a part of me understood why he stopped and took the money, but another part of me really didn’t. If Llewelyn was a single man with no one to rely on him I may see his choices differently. I felt like Llewelyn was a representation of greed, and wanting to have it all. While he isn’t financially well off, he’s rich in other aspects. He has a loving wife who is devoted to their relationship, a job, a roof over his head, and food to eat. He throws away the latter for the money and puts everything that most of us would see as meaningful, at risk for some damn cash. At no time in his decisions does he think of the other people in his life, and only really does anything to protect them when the heat gets to be too much. Outside of putting his family at risk, Llewelyn brings this mess to a lot of people who really shouldn’t have to deal with it. Take Sheriff Bell for example. Having been the Sheriff in his town for a while, he is used to dealing with quiet days, and mostly just trying to keep the peace with his people. Llewelyn brings this mess to his front door forcing him to have to put himself in danger to protect his people.
Earlier on I brought up the fact that the plot itself if fast paced, but the characters aren’t and it makes for an interesting story. The characters are used to the slow country life and move as such. Reading the interactions between the Sheriff and his Deputies as they scan scenes riddled with dead bodies of drug dealers, it’s almost comical. I think it’s supposed to represent how out of sorts this kind of thing is for the Sheriff and his people. Llewelyn similarly has the same attitude. As soon as he takes the money he knows he’s screwed up, but he handles everything at such a casual pace. I felt like it was supposed to show how different this was from his day-to-day life, but at the same time clearly something he could do. Whatever he may have seemed before, he becomes a man who has no problem killing and running from whoever to have the financial gain. Really the question becomes how many people will Llewelyn let die so that he can steal drug dealer’s money?
It’s interesting because we start to see the attitude in the book shift, and it’s almost like Sheriff Bell is just waiting for them to kill each other and get it done with. The reality of this kind of violence is a small-town Sheriff can’t stop it, better to let them kill each other off, and then continue keeping the peace. Bell does try to get Llewelyn to stop it all, but when he doesn’t Bell just accepts what Llewelyn’s inevitable fate will be and moves on. Chigurh was also a really interesting character. He has no form of empathy or thoughtfulness at all, he is a pure killing machine. He doesn’t care who kills or why, as long as it fits the personal message he tells himself to make his actions okay. It’s interesting to see the different places all the characters fit on the morality scale. Everyone is at a different point on the spectrum and has a different view of the world and right and wrongs from one another.
Overall a really good read that I think every person will take something different from. It’s got aspects of gore and action, but also thought-provoking parts that make you question different aspects of the world. With a really dynamic character and a hard to pull away from plot this book is definitely one to check out.
Have you read No Country For Old Men or any of Cormac McCarthy’s other works? What did you think?
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