A review by jakej
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

adventurous challenging dark reflective slow-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

A towering achievement, so awe inspiring and distinctly McCarthian that it challenges the ideas of what a great book has to do. There is no character development and no protagonist (except in the superficial sense of occasionally being told from the kid’s point of view) and little plot. The purposes of the book are to remind you simultaneously of the necessity of violence to the world, and as a warning of what violence will do to it. More depressing and immersive than The Road, birthed by McCarthy’s archaic and cold descriptions.

The depravity hides a lot of complexity: there are a lot of unanswered questions in terms of plot that translate into unanswered questions about the characters' psyche's. However, the characters aren’t inordinately complex: the thematic treatment is through descriptive imagery and lacerating language, not through characters facing some internal struggle. It reaches near Biblical levels in the sheer amount that can be pulled from it.

Worth reading a dozen times.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings