We've pimped this book before, in a way. Last week, we pointed you in the direction of the Coen Bros.' latest effort, the adapation of this very title. We haven't seen the film yet, but it thrilled at Cannes, it stars Javier Bardem, and most critics who've seen it call it one of the best movies of the year.
But it all started with the book, Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece, which details the trouble that follows a case full of money and drugs across the bare landscape of southwest Texas. No Country's prose is terse but elegant, and its characters, from the everyman hunter who stumbles upon the cash to the mercenary hired to hunt him down, are superbly rendered. It's not a long read, but McCarthy's economy of words is perfectly suited for the world he's developed here.
None of these characters has time for small talk. The dialogue is stripped down to its bones, much like the plot. It's a good vs. evil story on the surface, but beneath it's a meditation on the moral choices men are often forced to make in an instant - and the mess they leave behind. McCarthy won the Pulitzer Prize for The Road and it's post-apocalyptic vision, but we'll always view No Country For Old Men as his greatest work.
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