Starred Review. Seven years after Cities of the Plain brought his acclaimed Border Trilogy to a close, McCarthy returns with a mesmerizing modern-day western. In 1980 southwest Texas, Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, stumbles across several dead men, a bunch of heroin and $2.4 million in cash. The bulk of the novel is a gripping man-on-the-run sequence relayed in terse, masterful prose as Moss, who's taken the money, tries to evade Wells, an ex–Special Forces agent employed by a powerful cartel, and Chigurh, an icy psychopathic murderer armed with a cattle gun and a dangerous philosophy of justice. Also concerned about Moss's whereabouts is Sheriff Bell, an aging lawman struggling with his sense that there's a new breed of man (embodied in Chigurh) whose destructive power he simply cannot match. In a series of thoughtful first-person passages interspersed throughout, Sheriff Bell laments the changing world, wrestles with an uncomfortable memory from his service in WWII and—a soft ray of light in a book so steeped in bloodshed—rejoices in the great good fortune of his marriage. While the action of the novel thrills, it's the sensitivity and wisdom of Sheriff Bell that makes the book a profound meditation on the battle between good and evil and the roles choice and chance play in the shaping of a life.
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* Dark themes suffuse McCarthy's first offering since his completion of The Border Trilogy, wose opening installment, All the Pretty Horses earned him both the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992. Texas welder Llewelyn Moss makes a dubious discovery while out hunting antelope near the banks of the Rio Grande: a dead man, a stash of heroin, and more than $2 million in cash. Moss packs out the money, knowing his actions will imperil him for the rest of his life. He's soon on the run, left to his own devices against vengeful drug dealers, a former Special Forces agent, and a psychopathic freelance killer with ice blue eyes. Shades of Dostoyevsky, Hemingway, and Faulkner resonate in McCarthy's blend of lyrical narrative, staccato dialogue, and action-packed scenes splattered with bullets and blood. McCarthy fans will revel in the author's renderings of the raw landscapes of Mexico and the Southwest and the precarious souls scattered along the border that separates the two. Many are the men here who maim in the name of drugs. "If you killed 'em all," says the local sheriff, "they'd have to build an annex onto hell." Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
From the Inside Flap
Set in our own time along the bloody frontier between
Texas and Mexico, this is Cormac McCarthy’s first novel since Cities of the
Plain completed his acclaimed, best-selling Border Trilogy.
Llewelyn
Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, instead finds men shot dead, a load
of heroin, and more than $2 million in cash. Packing the money out, he knows,
will change everything. But only after two more men are murdered does a victim’s
burning car lead Sheriff Bell to the carnage out in the desert, and he soon realizes
how desperately Moss and his young wife need protection. One party in the failed
transaction hires an ex–Special Forces officer to defend his interests against
a mesmerizing freelancer, while on either side are men accustomed to spectacular
violence and mayhem. The pursuit stretches up and down and across the border,
each participant seemingly determined to answer what one asks another: how does
a man decide in what order to abandon his life?
A harrowing story of a
war that society is waging on itself, and an enduring meditation on the ties of
love and blood and duty that inform lives and shape destinies, No Country for
Old Men is a novel of extraordinary resonance and power.
About the Author
Cormac McCarthy is the author of eight previous novels, and among his honors are the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
