Blood Meridian

Or the Evening Redness in the West

By: Cormac McCarthy

Narrated by: Richard Poe

Author of the National Book Award-winning All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy is one of the most provocative American stylists to emerge in the last century. The striking novel Blood Meridian offers an unflinching narrative of the brutality that accompanied the push west on the 1850s Texas frontier.

Critic reviews

“The authentic American apocalyptic novel…I venture that no other living American novelist, not even Pynchon, has given us a book as strong and memorable as Blood Meridian.” (Harold Bloom)

"McCarthy is a writer to be read, to be admired, and quite honestly envied." (Ralph Ellison)

"McCarthy is a born narrator, and his writing has, line by line, the stab of actuality. He is here to stay." (Robert Penn Warren)

A beautiful nightmare

Brutally violent, Blood Meridian turns the 19th century American West into a kind of hellish but hauntingly beautiful dreamscape, through which a gang of mercenaries wanders, killing without aim or reason. There is no comfort to be found anywhere in this novel, which overturns all Old West Myths, leaving only a stark, maddening world in which man exists on the edge of nihilism, "civilization" an illusion. The characters are almost opaque, reduced to actions in minimal dialogue. Even the language seems intended to confound and discomfit the reader, mixing arcane, half-forgotten scientific and philosophical terms with passages that sound almost like something from the Bible.

Yet, McCarthy is the definition of a powerful writer. His prose is hypnotic, the book's scenes affecting the reader as much by their eerie beauty and lyricism as by the horror and violence contained within. Their images will stick around in your head for days. The Judge, a monstrous, demihuman prodigy at the center of novel, whose amused, philosophical queries about whether or not the scenes around him represent man in man's natural state, is one of the more memorable characters I've come across in fiction.

Make no mistake, Blood Meridian is filled with powerful questions, about morality, about evil, about humanity's need for violence and dominance, about the nature of God, and so forth. Sometimes these questions are expressed explicitly, usually by the Judge, but mostly, they swirl just beneath the surface of the nightmare, challenging the reader to peer into the abyss and examine them. Though we don't live in such lawless times anymore, the distance from our safe doorsteps to the modern equivalent of a gang of roving, murderous scalpers may be shorter than we think.

McCarthy will certainly never be an author to everyone's taste, and not with this work, but Blood Meridian has made a few critics' "Best of the 20th Century" lists for a good reason. This is a first-rate work of modern literature.

Masterpiece. A work of art!

Listened to it twice to better appreciate and enjoy it. So rich, so wonderful. Dark and violent, yes... but that's what the time and place was. I have never encountered such a masterful rendering of the English language. This is the 20th century equivalent of Shakespeare. I read "The Road" also, and it was very good. This book is high art.

Worth a listen

I'm not sure of how to fully explain it, but this book is worth listening to. It's insanely violent and a little tough to get through the first part, but if you stick with it, it's beautifully written.

The best audiobook ever made

I’m not exaggerating. It simply has no equal. Poe doesn’t just give a reading, he gives an incredible voice acting performance worthy of the masterpiece. Even if you’ve read it several times, this is great way to experience Blood Meridian.

Made it into my favourite book list

I used to read quite a lot and now I listen audio books quite a lot. I have my own very tight favorite books list "Master and Margarita" and "One Hundred Years of Solitude". These are books that are very close to cover large part of magic called life. This book made it into the list - it's terribly complex book and not easy to read. Under the cover of extreme violence and morbid landscapes it opens much deeper core.

I have to admit, I put it aside once as I just could not read on, I could not let it go either. So after few weeks I picked it up and listened on. Once finished I started it immediately again, something I rarely do on books.

It's real masterpiece, although a bit hard to access first.