Blood Meridian

Or the Evening Redness in the West

By: Cormac McCarthy

Narrated by: Richard Poe

Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©1985 Cormac McCarthy (P)2007 Recorded Books

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)

Mesmerizing visuals, old-west-intellectul prose

McCarthy has the visionary expanse of the classic literary masters with the added thrills and savagery of the most gritty pulp writers. I agree it is a masterpiece.

McCarthy's characters come alive

This story is violent, heavy, and hard to stomach at times. McCarthy is one of the only authors that has the ability to make me woozy while reading, but I love every minute of it. This book is a classic study of good vs evil. An internal battle that is absorbed into the surrounding 1800's Americana. A classic for sure. Must listen...

The narration makes the book

Richard Poe is my favorite narrator on Audible. He could read Dick and Jane and make it sound amazing. But this isn't Dick and Jane. This is Cormac, so yeah.

have to listen to it again. but was good

kind of all over the place, but man was it brutal. i got kind of depressed at times, but that's the type of involved reader/listener iI am. i recommended this book. great narration.

If you like Cormac this is a gritty western classi

i love this book I have read it before and I like it even better on narroration

Bleak and Beautiful

Unrelentingly bleak and beautifully written, in BLOOD MERIDIAN Cormac McCarthy plumbs the unlighted depths of humanity and finds no bottom. It contains, in the Judge, a character as profoundly nihilistic as I've come across in any literature. Joseph Conrad's Kurz, perhaps, would at least recognize the Judge as a kindred spirit; but the Judge would laugh at any notion of horror - or any emotion save amusement - being the proper response to psychopathology. The novel can be read as a metaphor for the consequences of manifest destiny; with the Judge representing the unstoppable, remorseless, and unrepentingly violent force of U.S. expansion, ceaselessly eliminating or absorbing all that stood in its way, even while uttering the soothing words of beneficial intent. Hard to read, harder to put down.

Whoa!

What a wild ride. I'd suggest this book too anyone who likes the wild, and I mean WILD west. The book was gruesome and intense most of the time but well written and a great read overall. Only complaint is in regards to the narration. I could hear the narrator's cotton mouth very prominently, especially towards the first few chapters. Go grab a glass of water before you narrate an ebook!

a perfect audiobook

This is the first audiobook I've listened to that actually improved on the source material, as if this was the way the book was meant to be experienced.

Intense.

I was appalled by the savagery yet I couldn’t look away. It left me wondering if these acts described had happened before and the world was truly that cruel, or if it was all just cruel poetic license. In any case, I listened to every word, and in the end I hugged my 3 year old daughter and thanked something that she would know kindness in her life

Exceptional writing

A dark atmosphere combined with chance meetings with the devil himself. Simply fantastic and a re-listen for sure