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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12497.No_Country_for_Old_Men?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="No Country for Old Men" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1166503883m/12497.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12497.No_Country_for_Old_Men?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">No Country for Old Men</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4178.Cormac_McCarthy">Cormac McCarthy</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/26689117?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>This book is a masterpiece. I tend to rate books based on how much I enjoyed reading them; this rates a five by that standard, but it's also one of those books that will be with you for a while. It wouldn't let go of me after I read it; for several days, it occupied my mind and my imagination like a song I couldn't get out of my head. Generally, I classify books like that as really good reading, but this one was also beautifully crafted in some very subtle ways. I wasn't just thinking about the characters and the land and the events of the books; I was also trying to figure out (as a writer) how McCarthy did what he did. <br/> <br/>[I have to admit here that I'm a little biased about the book because of the location -- that part of Texas is home to me, and I can see every shade of dust and sky and road and river McCarthy describes -- he represents it well.:] <br/> <br/>Some readers complain about the way the book jumps around, shifting between points of view; nothing about the shape of the novel is neat and orderly, something we seem to like our fiction to be. It provides a kind of emotional roller-coaster ride -- a villain to hate, a regular guy who has done something wrong we can sympathize with, and a sheriff, a good man who appears to be the real center of the novel by the time we get to the end. But even that final shift in perspective doesn't tie the novel up neatly -- it ambles and meanders, and if you tried to chart the spikes of action and denouement, which are generally supposed to increase in size and momentum as a book progresses to its final crisis, you would just have a mess. I've even heard the plot described as a "hoax". <br/> <br/>The villain gets his comeuppance, but only after he accomplishes what he has intended to do, with a lot of collateral damage. The book is not very satisfying as a morality play: yes, drugs and violence are bad, and taking money that isn't yours will lead to disaster, but that was fairly obvious to begin with -- why would the author waste his time creating such vivid characters and settings and situations if he was going to be so trite? <br/> <br/>When a book so beautifully crafted in other ways appears to be so flawed in others, it makes me wonder if perhaps the author had a reason for doing what he did. I can't speak for the writer's purpose, but the story does have the shape of a more natural narrative, one that closely echoes the narratives that come out of "real life'. (He chose an odd time frame, too -- 1980 usually isn't a focal point for meaningful narratives from our own point in time -- but in the context of the story, it's quite meaningful. Locally, it happens to be around the time drug-related violence spiraled out of control along the border with Mexico, but in a larger sense, it's also after Vietnam, which was not a "good" war like WWII, and at a point when the idealism of the 60s and 70s gave way to the Reagan administration.) <br/> <br/>I think the intention behind the shape of the plot goes beyond naturalism, though; instead, the reader is being prompted to look beyond the events themselves for meaning. This book isn't just about the struggle between good and evil, but about what it takes to oppose evil. Sheriff Bell is clearly a good man and a good sheriff, even an able lawman, who does not like violence. In the end, he is completely ineffectual at stopping Chigurh, because -- as he comes to understand -- he is not willing to do what it takes to stop him. Just as clearly, Chigurh represents the wave of violence that drug trafficking brought to the border during that period of time, and by extension, violence wherever it occurs. If good men do not do what it takes to stop violence, it takes over. <br/> <br/>As with any other book, readers can extrapolate where they want. For me, it became a metaphor for what happened in the US following 9/11: good people were not willing to stop the invasion of Iraq, which was obviously unnecessary violence motivated by the interests of a few; the result is a place where violence has largely spun out of control, with massive collateral damages. It could represent any armed conflict, any massacre, any genocide, where these things are true: violence has flourished because good, well-meaning people are not willing to do what they must to stop it, and it is always most destructive of those who are the innocent bystanders, and the least able to protect themselves. <br/> <br/>At the end of the book, the sheriff dreams of his father carrying fire in his hat, a symbol that anyone who has read "The Road" will recognize. It's also another way of looking at this book's central theme. The fire, of course, is the opposite of destruction and anarchy -- it is the fire Prometheus stole from the gods, the essence of a civil society built on law that will protect all of its citizens. The violent country McCarthy recreates in this book -- our country, our world -- requires guardians that are willing to do what it takes to protect even the weakest of its members from anarchy and violence, and to remember why it is we do it. <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/> <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1310414?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>