[BOOK REVIEW]
If I had to describe this book in one word it would be ''bleak''. I read a lot of criticism about Cormac MacCarthy's ''The Road'' and it put me off from reading his works for years. But years ago I watched this movie, and since I forgot 99% of it, I gave this book a go. The beginning was a bit tedious, it's not gripping, and it takes some time to get over the writer's utter disregard of proper punctuation, which makes reading (especially dialogues) a bit hard. Yet, after the first few pages I was completely absorbed by it. There are two characters who sum up the story. First, Anton Chigurh, the first villain I didn't kinda root for. We aren't given any background on him, and what made him the way he is, that's why it's so hard to find anything relatable about him or anything to redeem what he's doing. In this narrative he is purely evil, he has a moral code that makes him even worse. There is no sympathy whatsoever for him, or hate, surprisingly. I just followed his killing sprees trying to understand him, but there is nothing to understand. Even with the complexity of his thinking (that we get to know via his very rare dialogues) he is just soul less. On the other hand there's Sheriff Bell, his thoughts are a testimony on the downfall of humanity. He's from a generation where decency, morality, honor and respect were the guidelines of one's life, and he is faced with an era where those principles are extinct. He has to maintain the law in a land where law is an archaic concept. He is fully aware that things will only get worse in the future yet he maintains his stance. The whole book in fact is about this downfall, the savagery of human beings that keeps on evolving and finding new ways to express itself. A humanity that is going down into violence and selfishness. It might be taking place in Texas but it's an allegory of how the world is going to s••• each day that passes. As it is torn between the evil of Chigurh, the helplessness of Bell, or the stupidity of Moss (the guy who got himself into so much s••• that there was no hope for him to begin with).