Cormac McCarthy - No Country for Old Men

Pros: Plot, storylines, complexity of characters.

Cons: Can be confusing at times.

The Bottom Line: Not an escapist read. Well worth reading.

Review: Kevin’s Corner “Yeah, Wendell said. I guess you ought to be careful cussin the dead. I would say at the least there probably aint no luck in it. It’s just a bunch of Mexican drugrunners. They were. They aint now. I aint sure what you’re saying. ...

Pros: Readability, depth of character

Cons: Sparser than his normal style

The Bottom Line: A faster read than most other McCarthy novels, still interesting and fun, but without the usual McCarthy style.

Review: The style of No Country For Old Men is a significant departure from the other McCarthy novels I have read. For Delillo fans, it is like the shift from Underworld to The Hand Artist or Cosmopolis. In both cases, the author's brilliance is evident, but ...

Pros: Usually the prose. Characters.

Cons: Monologues. Monologues. Monologues. Occasional prose missteps.

The Bottom Line: isn't an old man.

Review: It can be dangerous for an author to know his own strengths. Most of Cormac McCarthy's works feature the same fragmented, naturally epic prose, saturated with broken phrases and run-on sentences. Generally speaking, McCarthy has honed his technique to a ...

Pros: Gripping and suspenseful.

Cons: McCarthy's creative use of punctuation may strike some as pretentious.

The Bottom Line: This is a challenging and thought-provoking novel, yet accessible and extremely suspenseful. It's a fairly rare combination. Recommended for book discussion groups.

Review: First off, I'll say that I found 'No Country for Old Men' to be an interesting and satisfying novel -- and well worth anyone's investment of time and/or money. It's very violent -- shockingly so at times, and action-driven. But in terms of ideas, you can ...

Pros: hard to put it down, but hard to not wince at the violence

Cons: the narrator babbles too much

The Bottom Line: a good book about bad people, but avoid the movie

Review: There is a point in this book in which you would say, “Only an idiot would do that. Why would you do that? It's the dumbest thing anyone could possibly do!” The problem is that if he doesn’t do it, then there’s no story. That bothers ...