I was warned before I read this that it would be violent and gross. It is a good thing I have a strong stomach. I'd read The Road previously, and loved it, but violence has its place in a post-apocalyptic novel. I mean, if the world ended and people weren't roasting babies over an open fire I'd be surprised. But Child of God is just the story of a guy whose house gets repossessed and he gets pissed, wanders off in the woods, goes crazy and starts killing people.
It took me a while to get into the groove of the narration and until the last 20 pages to decide I liked it.
The barren, simple punctuationless prose that made me love The Road seemed less appropriate here. It actually made it hard to concentrate, because I didn't always know what was going on. It was really pretty though. Well, as pretty as a description of necrophilia can be.
I'm not sure what happened, but in the last chapter or so I started really feeling for the guy, and all of a sudden I really enjoyed reading it. I sort of felt tricked, like he'd set it up that way. Like you're supposed to be grossed out by ol' Lester Ballard, and then you sort of sympathize with him in a weird sort of way, and then you think, sort of sarcastically, "well, I guess he is a child of God, just as I am. Ah." I can't decide if it really just got good at the end, or if it just takes that long to really get the book. So I spent most of the book hoping I'd hurry up and get to the good part, while still marking passages that sounded beautiful, and then all of a sudden at the end I loved it.
Either way, McCarthy is sort of a poetic genius. The book is one long ramble about titties and gunshots that doesn't differentiate dialogue from exposition, yes. But it is a really well written ramble.
I'll just post a bit of it. Here he's in a cave, wondering if he'll be able to find his way out.
In the night he heard hounds and called to them but the enormous echo of his voice in the cavern filled him with fear and he would not call again. He heard the mice scurry in the dark. Perhaps they'd nest in his skull, spawn their tiny bald and mewling whelps in the lobed caverns where his brains had been. His bones polished clean as eggshells, centipedes sleeping in their marrowed flutes, his ribs curling slender and whitely like a bone flower in the dark stone bowl.
Damn.
Pages:197
Time: Jan 23-Feb 6
Rating: 6 for subject, Maybe 8 for how much I like the way McCarthy makes a sentence.
I like that you're rating these now!
ReplyDeleteYou know, I get nightmares from violent movies and I've never read a violent book. I wonder if it would fare the same? The excerpt you chose was so image-laden and beautifully composed that it's difficult not to be curious about the rest, but I guess it's also possible to be beautifully written with boring content?
It might be worth it, if you wanted to give the violence a shot (haha accidental death pun). It didn't offend me, I just (and this actually sounds kind of horrible) am easily bored by reading about violence, unless it seems like it has a purpose. I'm not sure why. Also, this book is really short, so it might not take too long to read. I just was extra busy when I was reading it, so it took a while. But yeah, he's got some magical wordscaping abilities, so reading something by him would be worth it, no matter what is is.
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