I was looking forward to seeing this movie, since people only had good things to say about it, but then I discovered that the book came first. And when that’s the case, I always read the book before I see the movie. Though I’d never read Cormac McCarthy’s work, I didn’t think I’d like it because I had the impression that his stories are all set in the Old West, which doesn’t interest me. But since I knew the movie is set more recently then that, I gave it a whirl and I’m glad I did!

To absorb all the nuances, I read this book twice—partly because it wasn’t until about halfway through that I was able to understand McCarthy’s narrative style. His use of dialogue reflects the speech patterns of that part of Texas, which is more extreme than say, a Houston accent, which I only know because I lived in that city for a year. McCarthy writes almost phonetically, so I had trouble understanding some of what was being said. For example, he’d write “kindly” when what the character actually means is “kind of.”

In addition, McCarthy rarely, if ever, uses quotation marks throughout, so sometimes it was hard to know who was saying what until you got to know the characters. The second read helped a lot.

The narrative is sparse, yet includes so much detail. He makes your imagination work hard! Seeing the movie first would have ruined the aesthetic experience for me. Each chapter begins with a first-person narrative that reads almost like a journal entry, and is what the story is really about. It only took me about 2/3 of the way through the book to figure it out, though!

I’m very excited about seeing the movie—just bought the DVD. It’s bound to be as great as everyone says, considering it’s a Coen brothers film.