No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

I recently read The Road, which was my first by Cormac McCarthy and for the longest time, couldn’t get it out of my mind. So I was looking forward to reading No Country. This book wasn’t a disappointment, but I felt like I was reading an abridged version of a novel. McCarthy has a very terse style of writing using the "less is more" philosophy when it comes to what he puts down on the page. He leaves gaps and allows his readers to fill them in themselves. This worked tremendously well in The Road but fell a little short here.

The book centers on three main characters: Anton Chigurh, Llewelyn Moss, and Sheriff Bell. Moss is a young man who stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad somewhere in rural west Texas. He opportunistically takes a bag containing over $2 million in cash knowing full well that he’ll have to watch his back for the rest of his life. Chigurh is a killer sent to retrieve the money whose success has always depended on his refusal to allow any witness of his existence to live. Sheriff Bell is an old-time Texas lawman who finds himself tracking both men.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆