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epinkieham 's review for:
Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
by Cormac McCarthy
Honestly there’s so much to say about this book but also so little?
I picked this book up knowing that I wanted something more challenging to read, something to bring me back to my AP English class roots, if you will. This, unfortunately, did not scratch that itch in the way I wanted it to.
Right off the bat, the prose was much more difficult for me to read than I expected. It reminded me of Shakespeare in the way that it was almost a new language and the only way to get better at reading it and understanding it was to just keep reading it. If I’m being honest, I still finished Blood Meridian half confused on what was being written, especially when characters were feeling particularly philosophical.
I am also not above admitting that I did have to look up a chapter by chapter summary just to get through the middle of the book. It felt like nothing was happening and then suddenly things did happen and it would go over my head completely. It was only because of those summaries that I was able to finish this book in the first place.
As for characters, plot, etc., everything was…fine. I got what Blood Meridian was trying to do, I enjoyed the religious imagery and symbolism, and I didn’t even mind some of the more gruesome parts. Some descriptions truly made me nauseous, which I was (weirdly) looking forward to in this book. None of it was really GREAT, though.
I will admit, however, that some of it did start to get a bit old. There’s a point when blood and gore and brutality serves a purpose for the narrative and then there’s a point when we’re just writing horrible acts of violence just to keep the excitement going when the book drags. When I reached that point, when it was just violence for violence’s sake, I was pretty much checked out of the book.
Overall, it was definitely interesting, was definitely what I thought it was going to be, and yet I wanted it to be MORE. I also would NOT recommend this book to others. There are other books that have the same brutality or the same themes that do it much better than this that I would recommend far sooner than Blood Meridian. So, two stars from me.
I picked this book up knowing that I wanted something more challenging to read, something to bring me back to my AP English class roots, if you will. This, unfortunately, did not scratch that itch in the way I wanted it to.
Right off the bat, the prose was much more difficult for me to read than I expected. It reminded me of Shakespeare in the way that it was almost a new language and the only way to get better at reading it and understanding it was to just keep reading it. If I’m being honest, I still finished Blood Meridian half confused on what was being written, especially when characters were feeling particularly philosophical.
I am also not above admitting that I did have to look up a chapter by chapter summary just to get through the middle of the book. It felt like nothing was happening and then suddenly things did happen and it would go over my head completely. It was only because of those summaries that I was able to finish this book in the first place.
As for characters, plot, etc., everything was…fine. I got what Blood Meridian was trying to do, I enjoyed the religious imagery and symbolism, and I didn’t even mind some of the more gruesome parts. Some descriptions truly made me nauseous, which I was (weirdly) looking forward to in this book. None of it was really GREAT, though.
I will admit, however, that some of it did start to get a bit old. There’s a point when blood and gore and brutality serves a purpose for the narrative and then there’s a point when we’re just writing horrible acts of violence just to keep the excitement going when the book drags. When I reached that point, when it was just violence for violence’s sake, I was pretty much checked out of the book.
Overall, it was definitely interesting, was definitely what I thought it was going to be, and yet I wanted it to be MORE. I also would NOT recommend this book to others. There are other books that have the same brutality or the same themes that do it much better than this that I would recommend far sooner than Blood Meridian. So, two stars from me.