After reading Blood Meridian, I may never view a western film the same way again.

To be certain, it is a masterpiece, a rare and unique work of literature that rises above classification and genre. And to be certain, McCarthy must be viewed as a great American writer, one of the greatest in our time.

This is violent, brutal and destructive!
What a brilliantly written book but at the same time it is a devastating read! Again, his writing style does take some getting into like others I’ve read by him, but it just works! Not got the faint hearted!

Set in the anarchic world opened up by America’s westward expansion, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is an epic and potent account of the barbarous violence that man visits upon man. Through the hostile landscape of the Texas–Mexico border wanders the Kid, a fourteen year-old Tennessean who is quickly swept up in the relentless tide of blood. But the apparent chaos is not without its order: while Americans hunt Indians – collecting scalps as their bloody trophies – they too are stalked as prey.

Cormac McCarthy is a great writer and one that's hard to classify but he always write powerful novels.
This one is one of the most violent and horrific book I read, worse than any horror full of gore because you know that it could be the retelling of some historical facts.
His West is not a happy place: anarchic, violent, and brutal.
This is one of those novel that makes you feel like you're being punched and loving it.
I don't know if I will ever read again, I know it was a powerful reading experience.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

‘Some bears dance, some don’t’

A literary ‘classic’, McCarthy’s ‘masterpiece’ - who am I to argue? I found the author’s tale of a bunch of scalp-hunting desperadoes in Mexico and Texas in the mid 1800s both repulsive and at the same time fascinating. There is hardly a page which does not feature some form of stomach-churning violence, where the killers massacre Indian and Mexican, man, woman and child, descending from the merely immoral to the coldly amoral. Featuring ‘the kid’, a blank canvass of a teenage killer, ‘addicted to mindless violence’ and Judge Holden, the worst of villains, silver tongued, the man who claims he will never die, a personification of evil in its roughest and most refined state.

And McCarthy’s use of language, eschewing punctuation, its biblical formality, its descriptive overkill:

‘…nor did the judge lose this opportunity to ventilate upon the ferric nature of heavenly bodies and their powers and claims’

‘…and they watched like the prefiguration of their own ends the carbonized skulls of their enemies incandescing in front of them bright as blood among the coals.’

Every page, every paragraph, virtually every sentence is written like this. ‘Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair’!

I guess this novel might repay re-reading; in depth study: the judge’s sermon on war; his later homily on dancing. Is he the Devil, or merely a devil? And then there is the tale’s bizarre and deeply enigmatic ending.

One minor note I would like to add to McCarthy studies. When Tobin, the ex-priest, leaps at the judge with his crudely fashioned cross brandished before him, the words he uses from an ‘alien and extinct’ language, must surely be: ‘Vade retro, Satane’.

Blood Meridian is a novel that reinvents the Western, showing the brutality and lack of glamour as Americans on the Texas-Mexico border hunt scalps for trophies. Centred around the Kid, a fourteen-year-old who is drawn into this life, the book follows a band of hunters as they traverse hostile landscapes and stalk others, whilst trying to keep themselves safe.

Having never read a Cormac McCarthy book, this new edition as part of the Picador Collection seemed like a great opportunity, and I was drawn to the description of a Western that depicts a bloody, violent world. The writing style is, as I'm sure everyone says, distinctive, bringing a historical, literary feel and a sense of remove, and you can tell that this is an epic novel (I liked the summaries at the start of each chapter, basically the arguments).

Unfortunately, I also found Blood Meridian to be, well, boring. It's just personal taste, but with the lack of plot and few memorable characters, plus the cycles of action and long descriptions, I just found it hard to stay engaged, sometimes losing track of what was going on. I could tell the book was good and stylistically impressive, but it just didn't interest me enough and I didn't find it as shocking as expected. I'm sure plenty of people love this book, but it sadly wasn't for me.

“War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.”

Cormac McCarthy's shockingly debunks the myths of the American western in this novel, a raw relentless immersion into the worst of humanity and the evil it perpetrates, is not for the faint hearted as I discovered, a little way in I felt the strong urge to give up, but I just could not, partly because the poetic prose is so mesmerising and captivating. Based on the horrors of Texas and Mexico in the 1850s, we have the unnamed kid, the murdering Glanton gang scalping Native American Indians, but claiming centre stage is the vivid, larger than life, oft naked, absolutist dancing judge, bald, hairless, the child killer, deranged, the personification of evil, the destroyer. There are atmospheric descriptions of the landscapes in this unvarnished depiction of the human race's darkest side, a side I frankly did not really want to know about, but I cannot deny its existence throughout our history, and its presence here makes this a brutal, blood soaked, challenging read that is not for everyone, and which I can only recommend to those with the strongest of stomachs. Many thanks to the publisher.

Set in the anarchic world opened up by America’s westward expansion, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is an epic and potent account of the barbarous violence that man visits upon man. Through the hostile landscape of the Texas–Mexico border wanders the Kid, a fourteen year-old Tennessean who is quickly swept up in the relentless tide of blood. But the apparent chaos is not without its order: while Americans hunt Indians – collecting scalps as their bloody trophies – they too are stalked as prey.

I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t previously ventured into the world of Cormac McCarthy, but “Blood Meridian” happens to be one of my book club’s current reads, so I jumped at the opportunity of an arc (with it’s beautiful new cover!). This book isn’t an easy read - not because of the writing style, which is faultless, but just because the subject matter is so damn raw. But if you can push past the brutality, it’s worth it. It would probably be advisable to avoid this book if you’re looking for something to cheer you up - this is not the book for that. Wait until you’re in the right head space. But don’t overlook it - as bleak and harrowing as the content may be, it’s a classic for a reason.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an arc in exchange for an unbiased review.