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Helping himself to the proceeds, Moss is spotted and pursued across south-west Texas by Anton Chigurh, a man with an elemental thirst for blood almost reminiscent of the Judge. Add in a traumatised sheriff, another bounty hunter and Moss’ young wife and you have a novel that hurtles along in a clipped style that eschews the interruptions of inessential punctuation. The Coen brothers’ film version won the best film Oscar in 2007.
Javier Bardem played Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men.Credit:
The Road (2006)
A year later McCarthy published what many people regard as his most accessible book, a story of a father and son, “each the other’s world entire”, on a journey to the coast across a devastated United States in a post-apocalyptic world. Yes, there’s brutality and violence as one would expect from McCarthy, but what emerges is a deep tenderness between the two unnamed characters and for the natural world.
Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee in a scene from John Hillcoat’s film of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road.Credit:
It has been said the novel was inspired by the birth of his son John, to whom it is dedicated, in 1998 when the author was in his sixties. As our review said, “The Road triumphs on several levels, including its language, landscape and McCarthy’s ability to suspend the entire novel between his two main characters.” It was filmed, brilliantly it has to be said, by Australian John Hillcoat.
The Passenger/ Stella Maris (2022)
After a 16-year silence, McCarthy published two novels within the space of a couple of months. One must assume these are his final offerings, but who knows. The narratives focus on siblings Bobby and Alicia Western, whose parents worked on the development of the atomic bomb.
When Adam Rivett reviewed it he said, “What The Passenger slowly reveals itself to be is a book about mourning, with Bobby ... milling over the death of his sister Alicia and the poisonous legacy of his parents, who worked on the atomic bomb ... it’s thrilling to return to writing as unashamedly biblical and rhetorical as this.” Stella Maris is a dialogue between Alicia and her doctor at the eponymous hospital. Rivett wrote: “In Stella Maris he has tried, at a shockingly late age, for something new, and in every way, from voice to subject matter to perspective ... Side by side, both novels affirm the extraordinary poetry and strangeness of McCarthy’s vision”.
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