"no country for old men" by cormac mccarthy

i've been havin a real hard time gettin into books the last couple weeks. i'd start one, not be able to get into it, and give up. i was tempted to part with this book, but i forced myself to keep goin. it took about 150 pages, but i finally got use to the style an figured out how to read it.

prior to this, i had read no other novels by cormac mccarthy. i don't know if his other works use a southern america colloquial, lack punctuation like quotation marks an apostrophes and use plenty o fragments. this style added to the frustration of plodding through the bleak landscape of this novel which is filled with simple, yet strikin images, stark violence an, at time, a biblical like tone.

i’m sure most people already know the story. one day llewelyn moss is huntin in the texas desert when he comes across a whack of dead bodies, a truck load of heroin an over two million dollars. he takes the money an is, from that point on, on the run from a merciless killer (anton chigurh) after the money, an the law tryin to get to him before the killer does.

with the recent coen brother’s adaptation of this novel onto the big screen, it was interestin to note the differences an similarities between the book an the movie. the most notable difference is of the character of sheriff bell, who, in the film, is a minor character; his quiet search pushed aside by the dramatics of the moss and chigurh chase. in the book, the sheriff is the central character, having beautifully melancholic monologues between each chapter which give his history and reactions to the bloodshed that’s part of his job. these monologues make sense of the title as he struggles with how times are a changin an he’s no longer cut out for law enforcement.

once i got the hang o this book, i enjoyed it. because it took me so long to get into, i had the urge to go back an re-read the first 150 pages. i’ll suffice with seein’ the movie again when it comes out on video.