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Lisa of Troy's Reviews > Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
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Blood Meridian is the strangest book and not in a good way.
This is a novel set in the 1850’s which follows The Kid’s travels through The West of the United States. He encounters many dangers: Native Americans, Mexicans, local authorities, thirst, sickness, and fellow travelers.
Blood Meridian is told in a somewhat experimental format. It is a bit hard to follow which must be a known issue because it has chapter summaries at the beginning of every chapter! It also has no quotations marks for the dialogue, and the names of The Kid and The Judge were not frequently capitalized.
For example, there was a passage with The Kid and Toadvine. I must have read it 3 times because I wasn’t clear what happened to Toadvine. And I didn’t miss anything—the passage just isn’t well written.
There are a ton of characters which were difficult to keep track of, and this book is gruesome. It is extremely gory and probably has about half a million trigger warnings.
It was interesting learning about this time period, but I won’t be revisiting this anytime soon.
The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Softcover Text � $9.99 from Amazon
Audiobook � $84.99 per year through Everand
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This is a novel set in the 1850’s which follows The Kid’s travels through The West of the United States. He encounters many dangers: Native Americans, Mexicans, local authorities, thirst, sickness, and fellow travelers.
Blood Meridian is told in a somewhat experimental format. It is a bit hard to follow which must be a known issue because it has chapter summaries at the beginning of every chapter! It also has no quotations marks for the dialogue, and the names of The Kid and The Judge were not frequently capitalized.
For example, there was a passage with The Kid and Toadvine. I must have read it 3 times because I wasn’t clear what happened to Toadvine. And I didn’t miss anything—the passage just isn’t well written.
There are a ton of characters which were difficult to keep track of, and this book is gruesome. It is extremely gory and probably has about half a million trigger warnings.
It was interesting learning about this time period, but I won’t be revisiting this anytime soon.
The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Softcover Text � $9.99 from Amazon
Audiobook � $84.99 per year through Everand
Connect With Me!
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Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West.
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Reading Progress
January 1, 2023
– Shelved
June 14, 2024
–
Started Reading
June 19, 2024
–
Finished Reading
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message 1:
by
Lynn
(new)
Jun 19, 2024 09:13AM
Thank you. I kept debating reading this - now I know I can skip. Really like quotation marks. So many books I’ve read lately don’t have them. Why not?
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Thanks. I never bought into the Cormac McCarthy hype. I always heard how "great" the overrated No Country for Old Men movie was. Never got it myself.
Wow. I read two of McCarthy’a books several years ago - really liked them. Then started a third - Child of God. It was so disturbing to me. I stopped reading it and have never read anything else by him. After seeing your review, I’m going to remove this book from my ‘want to read� and continue with my boycott!
Yes. McCarthy's style is very odd. This book is also often named as "one of the most violent and disturbing" novels of recent years.
We are in the same boat, Lisa. I really wanted to love this book, but couldn’t. Maybe I should give it a try again at some point, but who knows if that’s a good idea. Nice review. :)
Ben wrote: "............"Let me put some "skin" in the game...
You loved it eh? I enjoyed it myself. I don't know if agree it was that disturbing...
Then again I read a lot of "disturbing" books. And a lot of "violent" books for that matter. I love to see and hear other people's views and thoughts tho,
I had this on my list but I didn't know about the strange punctuation and a million trigger warnings.
What did you think of "The Road"?
We agree .. as you can see
Currently trying to get through the audio version and a lot of my thoughts were echoed here. At times, it feels unnecessarily poetic.
It is most definitely hard to follow. I read The Road before starting Blood Meridian and even that was a bit difficult at times, but nothing compared to BM. I want to like it, but it is honestly a struggle to get through. The sentence structure, the endless run on paragraphs- and that’s not even mentioning the strange dialogue. I doubt I’ll ever read it again.
