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No Country
for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
(Book Review: August 2005)
I’m baffled as to why this book is receiving such
accolades. Sure it’s a compelling thriller in the vein of McCarthy’s Border
Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses), but it lacks character development
and a point of redemption. And yes, I get the smart pontifications on life,
its sense of purpose and the nifty convention of times and dates equivocating
to bible verse, but the story as a whole, has far too many holes. It takes
place in 1980, and yet there are mobile phones small enough to fit in a
pocket. (My pal Stu had a mobile phone in the late 80s and it was as big as a
breadbox). Plus the main protagonist, on the run from some nasty sorts, is
allegedly a savvy Vietnam vet, and yet he returns, to the remnants of a shoot
out where he found 2 million dollars earlier that day. Why he goes back is
ill explained and a nagging loose thread—any sane person would have taken the
money and run or called the cops the first time. Worse (spoiler) after he
finds a homing device planted in the money, what does he do? He just lies
back in his hotel room and takes a nap. The most interesting character in
McCarthy’s potpourri of thugs and other such miscreants happens to be a cold
blooded killer with no depth; anyone who provokes, if only for an ephemeral
moment, quickly rides off into the sunset or is shoved into a body bag, long
before the reader can savory their presence. Style wise, McCarthy
delivers some tart descriptions, but too often, the writer chauffeurs his
characters (he did this, and then he did that and then he did this, and so
on) to the point of tedium, and early on, he shuffles lazily between a first
and third person narrator. The structure too, is a tad muddled, but yet
somehow that lends to the mounting intrigue. And as the story heads into its
final lap, it postures itself for something profound—something that wasn’t
there before. The result unfortunately, in context to the hash of genres that
occupy the pages, is pompous and unfulfilling. - TBM |
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