mydarlingcurse.com

i’ve never read Cormac McCarthy before, so all this talk about how he’s the next great American Novelist is lost on me. i don’t know him from adam and No Country for Old Men book didn’t make me want to cross any rooms to meet him either.

i bought this book for hubbin for x-mas because he wanted to see the movie, and as you may have guessed, i’m of the school that you should read the book first, it’s always better. period. always.

one of the comments he had while reading it was that the punctuation was off. i noticed this too. it wasn’t that i found it distracting, but i generally think that when authors purposefully go to such lengths to break the rules, there must be a reason for it. that it must enhance the story in some way, and in NCfOM i just didn’t get what that might be. it did make me pay more attention though. you really had to pay attention because none of the dialog was separated from the narrative. so it was to know what was being said vs what was being thought.

also, there was a seemingly important character that was introduced for the first time well into the book, and the character was killed off almost instantly. again, i didn’t see the point of that.

the story itself is pretty cliche cat-and-mouse. it reminded me a lot of A Simple Plan, which i read years ago. the assassin had a cool weapon, but that’s about it. he was a cold-blooded heartless killer - big surprise. the man who he is after didn’t have much of my sympathy since i was unclear as to what his motives are. seems too easy that he just wanted to keep the money. also, and probably the best part of the book was that the sheriff doesn’t get his man. the killer is never caught. and all of the sub-story surrounding the sheriff wasn’t that compelling.

all in all, i wasn’t impressed. sure the villain is kinda cool, but villains are always the most interesting character. too bad we never know enough about him, but you’ll never know anything about the rat-bastard who shoots you dead anyway.

maybe the movie is better.