book review: Child of God by Cormac McCarthy

"It was quiet in the room. After a while the man behind his desk lowered his hands and folded them in his lap. Mr Ballard, he said. You are either going to have to find some other way to live or some other place in the world to do it."

What you get with McCarthy is a world that is undefined. You don't get the specifics of time, the lack of quotation marks means speech blurs into thoughts and actions and it's not always clear where the line between wrong and right starts and ends.

The result is a reading experience that challenges you to stick with a main character who over time becomes a serial killer and a necrophiliac. Lester Ballard is introduced as a man about to lose his home to auction. After that he becomes a wanderer and lives in a shack until he stumbles across a couple that have committed suicide in a car. Their last act before the fumes overtook them was to make love and it is the naked couple that Ballard discovers.

You can tell he is struggling to control his emotions as he goes to and from the car stealing money, drink and eventually after several return visits entering new dark territory by stealing the female corpse. This becomes his possession both sexually and in terms of company as he dresses her and lies with her by the fireside in his shack.

Accused wrongly of rape a spell in jail reintroduces Ballard to the local law enforcement and you sense he will meet them again later as his killing spree grows.

He doesn't stumble across a couple dead in a car again so he has to put the death into the situation shooting out with his rifle and taking the female corpses back to a cave he lives in after his shack burns down.

As he slides into madness and starts wearing female clothes he becomes even more isolated from reality. This is deepened by deep snows, then a flood which cuts Ballard off from the town. That gives the madness time to take hold but his luck runs out when he tries to shoot the owner of his old home and comes off second best in a rifle versus shotgun fight.

But Ballard never quite faces up to his crimes and just as in other McCarthy novels the question of whether he should have felt guilt is one that the reader is left to wrestle with.

"You think people was meaner then than they ware now? the deputy said.
The old man was looking out at the flooded town.
No, he said. I don't. I think people are the same from the from the day God first made one."

Although very readable this is not a pretty work of fiction in terms of subject matter and the images you are left with are earth, caves, corpses, rifles and the worse kind of sex. I'm trying to work out quite what enjoying this read means about me.

Thoughts at the halfway point of Child of God

Going into the world of Cormac McCarthy is always dark, earthy and usually disturbing in the graphical portrayal of violence and sex.

Child of God delivers all of that but you find yourself sticking with the main character Lester Ballard as he loses his house, becomes a peripheral player on the edges of society and reason and ends up living in a shack in the wilds.

Lester is not a good guy but as he is first introduced he is as thee rest of us a 'child of god'.

Quite what will become of the semi vagrant Lester out in the woods with his rifle is what keeps you reading.

book review - Outer Dark

This was an incredibly easy book to get through despite the subject matter. Despite the italicised start and the slight disorientation that comes from a complete absence of quote marks that is the Cormac McCarthy style the story gets you early on.

The themes that seem to run through his work include traveling down roads searching for something and coping with extreme almost supernatural violence.

Outer Dark has doses of both with a brother and sister giving birth to a son from their incestuous relationship that seems to be one of hate by the time the child comes and possibly was never one of love just forged out of boredom or possibly rape and violence.

The siblings live in a run down shack and the day she gives birth a tinker comes calling and it is he who discovers the abandoned child in the glade that the father chooses to dump it in.

The mother does not believe her brother’s explanation of the infant’s death and a hunt then starts for the child. She wanders looking for the tinker and then her brother wanders looking for her.

The siblings wander through an America at the turn of the last century with work available for those prepared to sweat in the fields but suspicion as well as madness waiting for them as they pass from settlement to settlement.

Complicating the search for the tinker is the shadow cast by mysterious men who seem to cross the path of the brother and murder and engage in cannibalism. Who are they and what do they want? Those questions become more important as the dark horsemen get closer to intersecting with the siblings and the lost child.

The world that McCarthy describes is one that works on different planes with the landscape holding as many secrets as the people. When Holme crosses on the ferry and the cable snaps in a storm the elements as much as the mean spirited ferry driver are against Holme.

As the siblings go down their separate roads they draw nearer to a climax that not only leads to the child but also the destruction of their relationship. The sister finds the tinker but it is the mysterious riders who find the child and Holme and in the end the sister just finds ashes marking the end of her journey.

In a way this sets out all of the themes of his work – a journey, a road, violence, potentially a brush with something supernatural and an America that is lost.

Version read - Picador paperback

Outer Dark - post III

There is a scene towards the end of the book that turns out to be the climax of the hunt for the missing child. The three mysterious men who have been travelling the road that Holme and his sister have been wandering along are discovered in a glade having found the tinker and the infant.

The tinker is not in the land of the living anymore and the child has been rolled too close to the fire at some point and has half of his face burnt and is missing an eye.

Holme attempts to act with indifference but when he is told to hand over the child he does so without too much resistance and then watches as its throat is cut and one of the men then plunges his mouth into the fatal wound.

The sister arrives but too late to find anything other than charred bones and a scene of desolation. The tinker has become the fodder for the birds and the journey comes to an end.

But the book doesn’t come to an end until there is a literal metaphor about the end of the road and the dangers of being blind to the dangers of the road. In a sense it reminds you of The Road with the echoes of cannibalism and the road leading nowhere but to death.


A review will follow soon…

Outer Dark - post II

The brother is hunting the sister and she is hunting their child. Chapters alternate with their progress with both begging for food and work as they struggle along the road that they hope will carry them to a conclusion.

Around the brother in particular negative things start to happen. Having stolen the squire’s boots he has to roam wifely to escape justice but is tracked by men who seem intent on killing him.

For now they have gone and the focus is on the sister but the threat of them has not gone away and they might remerge. In this turn of the century world hospitality is forthcoming to both siblings but without a family or a wedding ring they spark suspicion in the God fearing folk who wonder what their motivation is to be wandering so far from home.

More tomorrow…

Outer Dark - post I

Welcome back to the world of Cormac McCarthy with the italicised [passages and pages of dialogue devoid of speech marks. But also welcome back to a world on the edge where nature can be both familiar and unnatural in a split second.

The setting seems to be in a world where horses pull wagons, people live in shacks and money is tight but available to those prepared to work hard.

A brother and a sister live in a shack and she is pregnant with his child. A tinker comes calling and is brusquely shown the road by the brother who returns to a cold home with a sister going into labour.

He refuses to seek outside help and delivers his own son. While mother and child sleep he takes the baby into the woods and abandons him and then in a storm loses his way and sees the child again before stumbling home. The tinker picks up the child and although the brother tells the sister he has buried the baby after it died she digs at the earth and exposes his lie.

Her mission is to find the tinker and the child who she manages to link together. But with her brother gone, taking all the money with him, the question is not whether she will find her son but if her brother will allow her.

But for now they have both gone their separate ways.

More tomorrow…

book review - The Road

The Road is one of those books that gets talked about over a hot dog at a friends barbeque or in the pub. For most people I spoke to it was the first time they had come across Cormac McCarthy and the Pulitzer Prize and the critic’s recommendations wowed them. But one friend persuaded me to read McCarthy before the paperback of The Road came out so there was an odd route to The Road.

But it was a route worth commenting on because without reading No Country for Old Men and the Border Trilogy it would have left me at a distinct disadvantage. There are several things it takes time getting used to with McCarthy. The first is the lack of quote marks and the lack of chapter headings. The second is that you become acquainted not only with his themes – a dying age and the end of the cowboys – but also with his ability to deliver shocking violence.

Come to this without any of that understanding and it might well have forced some people off. I know of at least one person who did not stick with it and that is a shame because this is exactly what great fiction is all about. It is epic in its ambition to paint a picture of a world that is post apocalyptic and its last few inhabitants. It is focused in its characterisation basing almost the entire book on the relationship of a father and son. Plus it is clear in its message – kill the planet and something dreadful awaits us all.

The story is on the one hand quite simple with a father and son walking the road to the coast, a couple of hundred miles, dragging all they can in a cart. They search for food and other tools on the way, risking running into other survivors in the process. They stumble across a group of cannibals and almost become victims to them. But the wariness the father has all the time leads them finally to the coast. There the end comes for the father as he dies of some sort of tuberculosis type condition leaving the boy to the care of another family.

Throughout there are musings on God – does one exist in that sort of world – the past and crucially life and death. If there is nothing but death eventually then why not end it now – a choice taken by the boy’s mother. At the end of The Road you are left with numerous questions. It is surely for that reason that this book has been so highly regarded. In a world where global warming and nuclear weapons – just two ways both long and short – that we could destroy ourselves, dominate the headlines few things make you think as much as this. By painting a vivid picture of what it could be like if it all goes wrong this book should sound the alarm for all of us.

Version read – Picador paperback

The Road - post VI

The ending of The Road reminds you of the wonder of a great book. By the end you are immersed in this burnt out world where ash, darkness and death pervade and hope is something that is akin to a dream.

The central characters of the father and son not only hold up a mirror to the present and the past but also remind you, all too powerfully at the end of the story, about the difference in mortality between the young and old. The father talks of the fire being passed down from generation to generation but it feels more like a burden as the skills that helped one generation exist disappear into the ash.

Having reached the coast the disappointment at the grey sea and the lack of difference is palpable. The cart full of their belongings squeaks along the road and the constant search for provisions and tools that will help them dominates everything. McCarthy brings together all of his themes of dying eras that have been in his other books as well as his ability to create characters that have a deep friendship. Just as with Billy cradling the dead John Grady in his arms in Cities of the Plain there is another of those moments here as the last few pages slip by.

Ambitious books like this throw up big questions. At the end you are left not only wondering what it would be like to live in the world of The Road, but how you can live now to make sure our children not only never face a burnt out world, but have the life skills needed to survive whatever is thrown at them.

The Road - post V

Unless the last 60 pages of this book go totally wrong this is going to be a cracker of a book. This is what literature should be all about. Not only asking the reader to think about some of the biggest questions but also describing a world so convincingly that it feels as if you could be there.

This book is head and shoulders above the other McCarthy novels that I have read because he is writing about the future not the past and the world not Mexico. What is happening in America in The Road is the same everywhere and concepts such as borders have become irrelevant. The relationship between the father and so is also something that is universal. What is trust and what is love? What happens when you can no longer look after someone and have to lie down and die? Add to those questions any parents face the scenario where you no longer know if you can deliver on your promises and it has the potential to be heartbreaking.

The father and so wander along the road and always seem to find some hidden cache of food when they are nearing starvation but they can never stop. They spot some adults following them and stumble across them cooking a baby to keep hunger at bay. This book contains images that you would expect as a consequence of an apocalyptic event but because McCarthy never overloads the landscape with charred corpses or cannibals whenever the father and so come across them they have the power to shock.

The aim in the next couple of days – before the end of the year – is to finish this great book off and also try to wade through the Swedish/South African plot lines and wrap up the Henning Mankell thriller as well.

More tomorrow…

The Road - post IV

There are some really big questions being asked by McCarthy all the time in The Road. If there is no such thing as God – if the dead world seems to disprove his existence – then why should you be kind to others? Why keep living when there seems to be no point? How do you die when those you leave behind are doomed?

All the time you keep wondering what you would do in a similar situation. Somehow although the bunker full of supplies that the father and son find is tempting you suspect that the safety of movement would win out. The Road is at least a destination and a reason for staying alive. The 200 mile journey to the coast might at least keep you going. Quite what you will find once you get there is anyone’s guess. But it taps into the American spirit to keep moving in search of something better and you are reminded in an odd way of Grapes of Wrath and the journey to the West.

More tomorrow…

The Road - post III

Despite the tension that has developed between the father and son walking through the post apocalyptic wilderness there is a moment of brightness.

An undiscovered bunker full of food and provisions is lying in wait for them. But that brings it own complications – do you stay and enjoy the supplies and then head off all the time feeling like a sitting duck? Do you grab what you can but then regret it when the food runs out and that large supply room was left abandoned?

McCarthy is able to get you to think like this because of the quality of the description. By now you know this is a world of meagre resources, where luck plays a crucial role in determining life and death. A country where cannibals walk the land looking for new flesh. And a world that occasionally has memories that evoke a past that has gone forever.

Compelling but because of the Christmas activity something that is being read as slowly as the father and son walk the road.

More tomorrow…

The Road - post II

Most of the time when you take a break from reading a book and slide in the bookmark it takes a couple of minutes and maybe a couple of pages to get back up to speed. But this is totally different.

Within a couple of paragraphs the tension that has been growing as the father and son head down the road is there again and as they discover the cannibals retreat the horror is gripping. They stumble through the woods and only just manage to get away but the vision that McCarthy paints, albeit it very briefly, is etched into your mind and this book has you by the throat again.

"Huddled against the back wall were naked people, male and female, all trying to hide, sheilding their faces with their hands. On the mattress lay a man with his legs gone to the hip and the stumps of them blackened and burnt. The smell was hideous.
Jesus, he whispered.
Then one by one they turned and blinked in the pitiful light. Help us, they whispered. Please help us."

I have to put it down because of time but there is no way of knowing what will happen next and whether or not the road will lead to their salvation or their death.

More tomorrow…

The Road - post I

This book is shaping up to be one of my favourites of the year, if not the favourite. The reason is that it is almost impossible to stop reading it and although the characters are as sparse as the post apocalyptic landscape there is something compelling here.

Reading The Border Trilogy and No Country for Old Men has been perfect preparation for this. Not only is the McCarthy style now easy to get to grips with – no quote marks and occasional switching between first name and surname – but also so is his big theme.

In books where the subject has been always about the dying of the light the cowboys and moral sheriffs wondering what is going to become of their world it makes sense to have done with it completely. Everything leads to this book and the road is not just a metaphorical one but also something that McCarthy has been travelling to get to this novel.

At almost the halfway point in the novel the story of the father and son struggling to follow the road to the coast is one that is gripping. Not just because their relationship is under the microscope but because their world has effectively ended. Walking through supermark4ets that have been looted and are now the domain of cannibalistic gangs the only real question that matters is whether or not they will make it.

But of course there is another bigger question here that is about not if this sort of scenario could happen but when. The world of cowboys is already coming to an end but McCarthy draws out the warning to us all pointing out that it is not just the ranches with the horses and their owners that face extinction.

More to come…

book review - Cities of the Plain

This is the final part of the Border trilogy by Cormac McCarthy and it reunites the main characters from the first two books All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing.

Like those two books this is about mortality. Not just about the passing and the death of individuals but the passing of an age.

Billy and John both work on a ranch that is being runned in the old fashioned way with men on horses training them, riding them and using them to keep watch over land and cattle. The collection of men that are working the ranch stretch from the late teenagers Billy and John up to old men who look like spending their last days on the ranch near the Mexican border. All of them have in common a sense of being lost in time and as a result out of kilter with the modern world. The ranch is going to be sold to the US army that are looking for places to get ready for the Cold War – there might even be a suggestion there of nuclear testing. That would really blast away any sense of the past.

There are numerous passages where Billy and John along with the others moan about not knowing what they really want as they stumble through the daily grind of being a ranch hand. But then things change for John Grady and it becomes quite clear what he wants and his object not only of affection but obsession falls on a 16-year-old prostitute. The relationship makes no sense on many levels. She is Mexican, unable to speak English and seems to be suffering from some condition that might ultimately be fatal. There is also the small problem of her pimp who has fallen in love with her.

But John Grady puts his mind to it and prepares a home on the ranch to bring her back to. But it never happens as she is killed by the brothel runners and ends up being identified by Grady in a morgue. That death sparks a couple more with Grady getting revenge before himself being a victim of the knife cuts of the pimp he kills.

His death leaves Billy bereft and no longer comfortable on the ranch. There is then an epilogue that to be honest is not required but shows that Billy spend most of his remaining years wandering before settling down to become some sort of living museum.

The past is all around McCarthy’s books and having got through the trilogy it seems to have set things up perfectly for his most recent work expanding on themes of mortality – The Road. These are books that could only be written by an American that not only has a sense of the relationship between the US and Mexico but also of the past and the present. The cowboy is such a strong image of everything that America represents – the hard working, land taking exponents of the American dream. That is why it is such a powerful twist to discover that the very cowboys that you would expect to be self assured and robust are lost in a world that no longer thinks it needs them or recognises whet they stand for.

A trilogy that has plays out some big themes but ends up underlining them in the friendship of two men who were stuck in the past.

Version read – Picador paperback

Cities of the Plain - post IV

Just as you expect with McCarthy the minute the story winds up on Mexican soil for any length of time the blood begins to flow.

The first victim is the young prostitute that John Grady has gone to visit. She is tricked into getting into a cab that winds up with her having her throat cut. Grady is the one who identifies her in the morgue and then inevitably sets out to exact his revenge.

In a clever bit of deliberate miss-identification Billy is the first to get to the brothel and demands to know from the pimp running the place Eduardo what is going on. He is sent away with the warning that if Grady turns up there will be trouble.

Grady does turn up and gets cut badly in a knife fight with Eduardo that ultimately ends in the pimp’s death. But Grady is so badly wounded. That he just manages to struggle to a tearaways den and collapse. Billy finds him but his friend dies while he is away fetching water. He is grief stricken and picks his friend up and the bloody pair then end the scene walking down the Mexican street.

The book would have been powerful enough had it ended there but there is an update on Billy who is 78 and a wandering hobo. He meets someone who delivers a classic metaphorical sequence about a traveller in a dream and death. The traveller dreams that he is executed and wakes to find that although he is alive the dream did take place. What was the dream and what was reality? That is the message from that exchange.

Things end with Billy being taken in by a family who seem to not mind him being around and recognise him for what he is – one of the old cowboys.

A review will follow soon…

Cities of the Plain - post III

Whenever you read a McCarthy book you always sense that there are moments that carry great symbolic weight. The problem is that when most of the book is broken up with a pattern of dialogue the prospect of a wall of unbroken text signals something is happening. As a result you tend to concentrate that little bit harder than elsewhere in the book and when you come away not quite understanding if there was some sort of hidden meaning you might have missed it can be frustrating.

Maybe there is nothing there anyway and it is a shame to spoil the reading of a good story but it is hard not to. For instance when a pack of wild dogs is discovered in the rocks above the pastures and it is responsible for killing calf’s a whole section starts on the chase to hunt them down. In the end using cowboy skills to lasso and kill the wild dogs the problem is solved but maybe the message is that the only chance these cowboys have for using their skills is on dogs.

There is also something about the way John Grady turns the abandoned shack into a home for his bride to be that reminds you of a simple life of the past when people lived on the land.

The story starts to move towards its pivotal point when the young girl will leave the brothel and try to meet up with Grady and cross the border so they can start their life in America.

The blind piano player from the brothel that Grady has befriended warns him that the pimp who runs the brothel is in love with the girl and he will kill her rather than let her go. There is also a suggestion that she is ill and has not told Grady about herself.

As she breaks out of the brothel and heads towards the border the girl is met by a taxi driver and promised to be taken over the bridge but she is driven to the river and waiting for her there is the brothel pimp’s sidekick armed with a knife.

More tomorrow…

Cities of the Plain - post II

The problem with the determination of John Grady to marry and rescue his Mexican sweetheart from the brothel and bring her back to the ranch is that it is doomed to failure.

Even though he discusses it with as many people who will listen you sense that by asking people if they approve of his intention to marry he himself has doubts. Back on the ranch there is the daily business of having to buy horses and try to make a profit being a cowboy. McCarthy uses these moments to flesh out some of the other characters on the ranch and the impression he gives is that for Billy and John the future is all around them. There are men of various different ages that have found the only refugee they can find is in a life that resembles the past.

For John Grady the Mexican romance is not seen as an escape from the life of a cowboy but and attempt to make it even more secure.

Grady is also not honest with people about who is sweetheart is and what she does for a living. In turn there are hints that the girl has not been entirely honest with him either.

More tomorrow...

Cities of the Plain - post I

The final part of the Border Crossing trilogy reunites the characters from the first two books. John Grady and Billy Parham are both working together on a ranch. The ranch is on land wanted by the military and there is a suggestion that the world of the cowboys is under threat of compulsory purchase order.

As was the theme with the first two books horses are the key feature with Grady training them and Parham working with them along with several other ranch hands. But the border with Mexico is also never far away either physically or mentally. Grady is the first to get involved emotionally with events south of the river after he falls in love with a prostitute. The 16 year old is working in a high-class brothel and Grady's plans to buy her freedom look like being doomed. But he seems determined to take her away regardless.

Billy seems to be wandering round without much cause still not sure what his purpose is on the planet. He has a loyalty to those he works with but is prepared to call a spade a spade when necessary.

Grady's love affair with the girl is where the feeling of doom comes from along with a sense that a time is ending and the cowboys will have to move on. The time of the horse is coming to an end. Quite what trouble Grady will bring on himself and those he lives and works with can only be guessed at. But given the violence in the first couple of books it should involve Mexicans, guns and a loss of blood.

More tomorrow...

book review - The Crossing

This is the second in the Border trilogy by Cormac McCarthy and there are several similarities with the first book All the Pretty Horses. Again there is a teenager who is wise and brave beyond his years. Billy Parham starts off by living in New Mexico with bus brother Boyd and mother and father. Like most rural family settings life is relatively hard and the father rules his sons and his land. But Billy is a bit of an independent spirit and it comes to the fore when his father and him track a wolf.

Throughout the book there are moments when there is not only symbolism but almost scenes that resemble biblical parables. To get into those moments it requires Billy to jettison the ranch and family and head over into Mexico with the trapped wolf, which he decides deserves to be taken home. There is something about man mastering a beast here as well as the wolf being a lightning rod to channel Billy’s maturity and when finally the wolf is killed he loses something physical but has gained the same independence that the wolf displayed. After meeting a priest who tells him a tale of how he met someone who challenged God and as a result of watching that struggle stopped believing himself he is given an insight into independent thought and the consequences of going against a calling.

The first crossing ends with him returning to find out that his father and mother have been killed and the horses have been stolen. He seeks out Boyd and together they go hunting for the stolen horses. They travel through Mexico and find the horses but as a result of fighting for them put their own lives on the line and ultimately become marked men. It doesn’t help that not only they get in a scuffle that results in the local gang leader ending up with a broken back but that they show no signs of appreciating the different rules that operate in Mexico. At this point a bit of Mexican history would have helped out because there are numerous references to the revolution but when Billy does sit down with a blind man who has a story to tell it is unclear what actually went on.

Boyd is shot for stealing the horses and Billy finally finds him and then helps reunite him with a girl they helped earlier on in their trek for the horses. Boyd and the girl disappear leaving Billy with little option but to cross the border and head for home. Three years go by with him working on various ranches before he decides to head back to Mexico to find his brother. Myths surround Boyd, who is reported to have killed two men, and Billy finally establishes that his brother is dead. The girl has disappeared but the corpse of his brother is retrievable and he digs him up and starts to head for home. After almost losing his horse to bandits and his own life he has a chance to squeeze in a third encounter with another parable teller. This time it is the father in search of the aeroplane his son was flying when he crashed and died. He knows that the plane the gypsies find for him is not the one but does that reduce the feeling of success that the quest has ended? He advises Billy to find what he is looking for. That leads Billy to head home and bury Boyd in his home soil.

With this being a trilogy it ends with Billy feeling pulled back to Mexico where you know the final part will begin and the story will continue and conclude.

Version read - Picador paperback

The Crossing - post VIII

The book comes to an end leaving you in a similar position to the end of All the Pretty Horses with a young man far from home in surrounded by nothing but hostility and loneliness. Billy manages to pin down not just how his brother Boyd died but where he is buried.

He digs up the remains and then is held up on the road and Nino his horse is stabbed and for a while it looks as if the horse will die and Billy will be left with a corpse in a blanket, miles from anywhere.

Gypsies come and fix the horse and then he meets a strange American who has lost his son in a plane crash who is paying the gypsies to retrieve the wreckage and take it home despite the likelihood tha it is not even his son’s plane. The man advises him to sort himself out and Billy seems to trekking back across the border for a final time to bury his brother in American soil. He works here and there and then he ends up sleeping in a barn on a stormy night. A dog wanders in – you realise it might actually be Boyd’s dog – but Billy chases it off. When he wakes he searches for the dog but it is long gone and he breaks down in tears at the loss of everything.

In a discussion with my McCarthy loving friend last night over a couple of pints he made the observation that it often feels that Cormac is writing for himself and it is almost accidental good luck if you like it. I made the point that what McCarthy does brilliantly is describe that moment when a smile flips to s sneer and violence erupts. The one thing we both agreed is that the last place you feel like jumping on a horse and riding off into the sunset into is a Mexico filled with horse knifers and killers sitting round every campfire.

A review will come soon…