Blood Meridian

Or the Evening Redness in the West

Paperback, 368 pages

English language

Published Nov. 6, 1992 by Vintage.

ISBN:
978-0-679-72875-7
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3 stars (7 reviews)

An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.

20 editions

Review of 'Blood Meridian' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

It would be very difficult to talk about this novel without getting caught up in a maelstrom of differing critical interpretation. This is understandable, considering the choice in style Cormac McCarthy utilizes... but perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.

Before writing westerns, McCarthy wrote what may be considered Southern Gothic or Faulknerish novels set in the depraved Appalachian country. Blood Meridian was his first, and many consider best, Western. This is particularly interesting since we start the novel with "the kid" who runs away from Tennessee and eventually makes his way to Texas and Glanton's band of scalp-hunters.

Another interesting tidbit: the historical Glanton was also from Tennessee. I mention all this to begin with because it seems as if the novel begins as a "moving away" from the earlier works of McCarthy. Cormac does not start out writing a Western, he transitions from the Southern literature of his early …

Review of 'Blood Meridian' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

God I don't know how to rate or review this book..... I will say I don't know if a book has ever left me pondering as much as this one has... Almost stopped reading it a few times but something kept me going... It's one I'll need to re-read! It's very very descriptive and you can take a lot or a little from it!

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4 stars
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2 stars

Subjects

  • Indians of North America -- Fiction
  • Teenage boys -- Fiction
  • Massacres -- Fiction
  • Outlaws -- Fiction
  • Glanton Gang -- Fiction
  • Mexican- American Border Region -- Fiction