#10 in Thriller
No Country for Old Men
- 309
- Pages
- about 6 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“No Country for Old Men” is quick to read and hard to shake off. McCarthy tells of a drug deal gone bad on the Texas border in a pared-down style that betrays the story’s origin as a screenplay, and he consistently refuses the showdowns and consolations a thriller normally supplies. What is left is a bleak view of violence that can leave a reader shaken. A crime story that offers no comfort.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
No Country for Old Men is a 2005 novel by American author Cormac McCarthy, who had originally written the story as a screenplay. The story occurs in the vicinity of the Mexico–United States border in 1980 and concerns an illegal drug deal gone wrong in the Texas desert back country. Owing to its origins as a screenplay, the novel has a simple writing style that differs from McCarthy's earlier novels. The book was adapted by the Coen brothers into a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.3 across 644 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 81% of the weight and the score stays at 8.2 — the Thriller average of 7.6 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.2 | 37 | 6% |
| Hardcover | 8.3 | 607 | 94% |
Frequently asked
How long is No Country for Old Men?
It has 309 pages — shorter than 93% of the ranked books in Thriller.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Thriller — with scores between 7.9 and 8.0, closest to this book.
