Frank Maccormack's Reviews > Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
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This book has moments of fleeting brilliance, and the last 50 pages of the book are almost flawless. However, there are 280 pages before that you have to read, which consist of, in my opinion, nothing more than barren landscapes, borderline shock-value accounts of depravity, and self-indulgent simile. It's a never-ending journey on the shoulders of quite possibly the most unlikable group of characters I've ever read, which in the hands of a particular writer, may work...McCarthy does NOT pull it off. When a reader spends an entire novel hoping the main characters die the worst death they can, it is almost NEVER an enjoyable situation. One cryptic and ominous character is interesting, but not enough to make me care what happens to any of the others. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty sure I "got" what he was doing the whole time; but just because an epic philosophical subversion of American expansionism is attempted doesn't mean it is successful. It seems a lot of people love this, but I don't get the attraction. What people could see in this miserable story, I'll never know, when his later work like The Road is much more engaging and well paced. Avoid, unless you enjoy reading about the slaughter of a Mexican village more than 8 times in one book.
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Reading Progress
Finished Reading
June 8, 2008
– Shelved
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me to read it. I gave it three stars, largely for the last 50 pages or so. The rest I would have given 1 star. I got fla..."
Good to hear someone else agree, I usually hear good stuff about the book and just don't understand.
I luckily have never gotten flamed for my opinions of the book, but definitely feel like I would have enough solid reasons for them to put up a fight.









But this was just flat and dull and pointless. The amount of time needed to figure out when people are speaking, who is speaking, who is present at the time, and what the author's going on about in his latest run-on sentence was not worth it. What you get in return for your patience and confusion is a lot of repetitive, pointless, callous murders of random people we won't get to know, killed by main characters we won't get to know. This greedy, sadistic bunch of psychopaths has no appealing side. Got it, they are broken and heartless and so are many of us, and it's important to show readers this type of cold cruelty. Understood. Why read any further then? I don't need endless examples of poorly written unemotional cruelty to understand the author's interest in showcasing it.
I couldn't force myself to keep going after 38 pages. When I look at the negative reviews, I can see that nothing changed or improved after the point I stopped reading. The violent scenes only got more despicable. The characters became no more interesting or sympathetic, the redundant events no less redundant.



me to read it. I gave it three stars, largely for the last 50 pages or so. The rest I would have given 1 star. I got flamed because i gave it only 3. Further, accused of being ignorant because I didn't rave about it. I don't understand what is particularly special about it and I agree with what you said. It's repetitive. Bleh.