You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
One of the most haunting, evocative, disorienting, and disturbing books I’ve ever read. It’s a compelling meditation on the nature of violence, fate, and the purpose of human existence, with Judge Holden acting as the nearly supernatural arbiter for each. He is possibly the most chilling antagonist I’ve ever encountered across all media. I’ve heard this referred to as “the greatest American novel” and I’m not sure if I agree with that, but I do believe it captures the true nature of America’s history of imperialism, racism, and violence in a way that I’ve never experienced before and likely will not again. I don’t think I enjoyed this book very much at all, but I’m rating it 4 stars for the completely unique experience that I had reading it.
slow-paced
I really tried with this book but I just found it so boring.
I struggled with the writing style which made me feel very detached from what was going on and as a result I really just didn’t care about the characters at all. I found lots of the descriptions of scenery to be very beautiful and evocative, but whenever it got back to dialogue it just lost me.
In contrast I absolutely loved The Road and found that book’s writing to be gripping and engaging, it felt as if I was right there in the scene with the characters. But I just felt so detached from this story. I went in expecting it to be this really harrowing read, and - yes gross stuff happens - but I never felt any kind of emotional reaction because I just wasn’t invested.
Most of the characters are pretty one note and interchangeable. The way the dialogue is written does not help this. I just didn’t feel any connection to any of the characters or their thoughts or feelings about what was going on, especially not the Kid who’s meant to be the main character.
There’s some interesting themes about violence, but nothing I didn’t already know.
I swear I gave this book a fair shot, and honestly I might try reading it again in the future, but I just really don’t get the hype around it. I’ve loved other work by McCarthy and I’m open to reading other books by him, but this one just did nothing for me.
I’ve read other people’s analysis of the book and I kinda see it, but I think for me personally a book can’t just be themes alone, and I need more of an emotional connection to the characters.
I struggled with the writing style which made me feel very detached from what was going on and as a result I really just didn’t care about the characters at all. I found lots of the descriptions of scenery to be very beautiful and evocative, but whenever it got back to dialogue it just lost me.
In contrast I absolutely loved The Road and found that book’s writing to be gripping and engaging, it felt as if I was right there in the scene with the characters. But I just felt so detached from this story. I went in expecting it to be this really harrowing read, and - yes gross stuff happens - but I never felt any kind of emotional reaction because I just wasn’t invested.
Most of the characters are pretty one note and interchangeable. The way the dialogue is written does not help this. I just didn’t feel any connection to any of the characters or their thoughts or feelings about what was going on, especially not the Kid who’s meant to be the main character.
There’s some interesting themes about violence, but nothing I didn’t already know.
I swear I gave this book a fair shot, and honestly I might try reading it again in the future, but I just really don’t get the hype around it. I’ve loved other work by McCarthy and I’m open to reading other books by him, but this one just did nothing for me.
I’ve read other people’s analysis of the book and I kinda see it, but I think for me personally a book can’t just be themes alone, and I need more of an emotional connection to the characters.
adventurous
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Si una palabra puede definir a esta novela sería violencia. Cormac McCarthy es uno de mis autores favoritos y tras releer Meridiano de Sangre me reafirmo. Me encantan sus descripciones, el lenguaje duro que usa y las pequeñas intromisiones en la trama que no llegan a ninguna parte pero que son el sello personal del autor.
Novela magnífica, de las mejores, sino la mejor, de McCarthy en la que retrata el salvajismo del oeste americano y de la frontera con Mexico. Además tiene uno de los mejores personajes que he conocido El Juez y un narrador en forma de un chaval sin nombre que nos hace aún mas cruda, si puede ser, la historia narrada de su boca.
Novela magnífica, de las mejores, sino la mejor, de McCarthy en la que retrata el salvajismo del oeste americano y de la frontera con Mexico. Además tiene uno de los mejores personajes que he conocido El Juez y un narrador en forma de un chaval sin nombre que nos hace aún mas cruda, si puede ser, la historia narrada de su boca.
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The only thing more lawless than Western America in the late 1840s-1850s is McCarthy’s persistent choice to exclude quotation marks.
**If your favorite character is the Judge, I’m going to immediately assume you only discovered empathy after doing shrooms
**If your favorite character is the Judge, I’m going to immediately assume you only discovered empathy after doing shrooms
Aw, bullshit.
Note: I listened to the audiobook, read by Richard Poe. (Review here, with sample.) Among the virtues of Poe's performance is that it led me to picture the Judge as a Macy's-parade-float-sized version of G. Gordon Liddy. I mean this as high praise.
I really wanted to leave just the two words as my counter to the conventional wisdom of this novel as a classic in the Moby-Dick tradition, but let me say this as well, in an effort to avoid seeming shallow or glib. My distaste for this book isn't owed solely to its nihilistic violence or to its gratuitous indulgence of racial slurs to make the unrealistic dialogue true to era if not to actual human speech. A tree hung with dead babies doesn't have to be a deal breaker, I guess, and one can always trot out a "but Huckleberry Finn" argument to excuse the N-word. Likewise, it's not McCarthy's singular humorlessness. There are a couple of laughs here, and they're even intentional, though they come without any irony whatsoever and are entirely about machismo giving machismo a bone-crushing reach-around. It's not even the tic-like insistence on endless "like some WEIRD DESCRIPTOR AHEAD OF ARCHAIC NOUN" similes.
I take issue with the sum of these liabilities and the notion that I'm supposed to accept this priapic bloodbath as a treatise on American manifest destiny or hegemony or whiteness or whatever. Just showing us a band of homicidal, racist idiots chasing Mexicans and Indians during the first century of the republic isn't enough to gird a deep critique of American empire. Not even close.
So yeah: I call bullshit.
Note: I listened to the audiobook, read by Richard Poe. (Review here, with sample.) Among the virtues of Poe's performance is that it led me to picture the Judge as a Macy's-parade-float-sized version of G. Gordon Liddy. I mean this as high praise.
I really wanted to leave just the two words as my counter to the conventional wisdom of this novel as a classic in the Moby-Dick tradition, but let me say this as well, in an effort to avoid seeming shallow or glib. My distaste for this book isn't owed solely to its nihilistic violence or to its gratuitous indulgence of racial slurs to make the unrealistic dialogue true to era if not to actual human speech. A tree hung with dead babies doesn't have to be a deal breaker, I guess, and one can always trot out a "but Huckleberry Finn" argument to excuse the N-word. Likewise, it's not McCarthy's singular humorlessness. There are a couple of laughs here, and they're even intentional, though they come without any irony whatsoever and are entirely about machismo giving machismo a bone-crushing reach-around. It's not even the tic-like insistence on endless "like some WEIRD DESCRIPTOR AHEAD OF ARCHAIC NOUN" similes.
I take issue with the sum of these liabilities and the notion that I'm supposed to accept this priapic bloodbath as a treatise on American manifest destiny or hegemony or whiteness or whatever. Just showing us a band of homicidal, racist idiots chasing Mexicans and Indians during the first century of the republic isn't enough to gird a deep critique of American empire. Not even close.
So yeah: I call bullshit.