No Country For Old Men

No Country for Old Men. Book review. First thing that immediately came to mind about this book was its excessive usage of the word 'and'. Never before had i read so many ands in a sentence in a book. For example, i took these words verbatimly from page number 140 in the book. 'The man unlocked a drawer in the desk and took out a steel of box and unlocked that and took out a card and closed the box and locked it and put it away again'. That's six ands in a single sentence. Second, as a non-English speaker, i felt that Texan-accented English is a single hardest accent for me to hear. And i considered myself pretty good at hearing English. However, i had never thought before that reading them was not an easy feat as well. Most people in this book used the accent and i found myself sometime, reading them out-loud so i could understand them. And third, but probably it's just the version i got, there's no punctuation in this book. It's a minor prob though, but there's a time when i had no idea who did the talking and had to trace back the conversation to restore the understanding. Well, maybe it's just me and my ultra-short attention span.

Aside from that, as i've seen the film first, there's not that much differences between the film and the book. For the most part, it's almost scene-per-scene. However, as with most film adapted from the book, small details are definitely bond to varied. I counted at least two additional significant characters existed only in the book, as well as at least two significant scenes involving these characters. There also some separate scenes in the book that in the film were merged into a single or a reduced scene. One such important scene is where Sheriff Ed Tom Bell narrates his meeting with Moss' father, and another that in a timeline, had happened after the film had ended.

Further, in my opinion, where as the film seemingly had the conflict between Lleweyn Moss, an old good boy, a Vietnam veteran who happened to pick a case full of money from a drug-deal gone bad with Anton Chigurh, a representation of evil who wishes to retrieve the case as its main course, the book definitely had the old Sheriff Ed Tom Bell as its main course. He narrates the book, providing a personal insight of what old men such as him, and other in his generation thought about the country in which they had lived and served, and of the changes the country had seen with the shifting of time, and how, in the end, that there was simply 'No Country for Old Men'. And in this respect, the film and the book was different, as each had simply gone to their own direction. And therefore, in my opinion, it is best to judge the book and the film separately. If you liked the film, doesn't really means that you're going to liked the book as well, and vice versa. I myself, loved the film, because of the character Anton Chigurh, probably - though there's no way i can be sure of it - just like the Coen Brothers had intended in a first place. And i loved the book because of the character Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. The character Anton Chigurh was to my surprise, i found as a simple backdrop in the book, almost insignificant if compared to the character Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. Whereas the film provides a character to deliver its message, the book provides the message to deliver its character. And if i seen it from this point of view, the book gave a truer meaning to its title, 'No Country for Old Men' than the film. Therefore, i held the book in a slight superior quality than the film.