Book Review: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

I had heard from several people that if you've seen the movie you have pretty much read the book, and this proved to be fairly true. (I actually credit the Coen Brothers for chopping the dialogue down to the bare minimum, because there were conversations in the book that felt overlong.) Since I saw the movie three times in the theatre and several times on DVD I wasn't able to fully experience the novel on its' own terms, but I'm still glad that I read it.

P.S. I should also note that despite the absence of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, this book is ten times as bleak as THE ROAD. That book, for all its grim imaginings, is about hope in the face of hopelessness. This novel, as the last paragraph makes clear, is about the absence of not only hope, but any order or sense to the universe at all. Harsh.