Cormac McCarthy

Child of God

Evan

Given charge Ballard would have made things more orderly in the woods and in men's souls.

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 in.

I was surprised to see somewhat middling reviews for this in places. I'd call it the simplest Cormac McCarthy book I've read yet; I honestly don't believe there's much to grasp or wrestle with, here.

The big "dilemma" is probably 'Just how guilty of his crimes is Lester Ballard?' as though we're supposed to ask ourselves if the man really stood any other chance. We're shown that he did not have a healthy upbringing nor are many of his fellow Tennessean residents exactly good people (there's some public incest in town). Except, of course he did; it's comically obvious that Lester is a guilty, horrible person. How shameless Lester Ballard is in his lack of condolence is hilarious. He's rotten to the core.

I thought this was a very, very funny book. Even just shopping for groceries is an episode with Lester. He's so unsympathetic and grossly hedonistic, he's barely human at times. I found this to be very similar to "American Psycho" in tone and style, as this is basically a character study same as that -- only this has Cormac McCarthy's unique touch, of course.

I loved "Child of God", I only wish I got more to read! It was a very short story with a rapid pace, some chapters weren't even two pages. You could easily read this in one or two sittings, especially if you are as enthralled with it as I was.

I loved "Child of God".

  

I was surprised to see somewhat middling reviews for this in places. I'd call it the simplest Cormac McCarthy book I've read yet; I honestly don't believe there's much to grasp or wrestle with, here.

The big "dilemma" is probably 'Just how guilty of his crimes is Lester Ballard?' as though we're supposed to ask ourselves if the man really stood any other chance. We're shown that he did not have a healthy upbringing nor are many of his fellow Tennessean residents exactly good people (there's some public incest in town). Except, of course he did; it's comically obvious that Lester is a guilty, horrible person. How shameless Lester Ballard is in his lack of condolence is hilarious. He's rotten to the core.

  

I thought this was a very, very funny book. Even just shopping for groceries is an episode with Lester. He's so unsympathetic and grossly hedonistic, he's barely human at times. I found this to be very similar to "American Psycho" in tone and style, as this is basically a character study same as that -- only this has Cormac McCarthy's unique touch, of course.

  

I loved "Child of God", I only wish I got more to read! It was a very short story with a rapid pace, some chapters weren't even two pages. You could easily read this in one or two sittings, especially if you are as enthralled with it as I was.

  

I highly recommend "Child of God".

there were parts that were really interesting but they didn't make up a lot of the book.

Maya

Patrick Book

I liked this a lot, even though I'm not sure it's a success in the way which McCarthy may have meant. By positing that Ballard is "a child of god, perhaps like yourself," you get the sense that he's writing about all men, attempting to reflect the darkest parts of humanity writ large. 

While it's viscerally written — for example: the under-developed boy chewing the legs off a robin so it can’t run away is surprisingly impactful considering the numerous grotesqueries peppered liberally throughout — the splashes of humanity Ballard rubs up against seem inadequate to ground the story in reality. His monstrosity seems somewhat unearned: his background seems to be missing key motivators, unless we’re to believe a blow to the head set him off on a murderous and necrophilic trajectory, which seems unlikely. There's more meat on the bone in his apparent desire to consume/destroy the people in which he has confided and had contact with, perhaps a commentary on the neglect and violence with which we treat the people society deems lesser than? 

In the end, it comes off as a dry run for 'No Country for Old Men,' as both feature a world-weary sheriff interrogating community elders about the historical brutality of men and a remorseless killer divorced from humanity. But it is wildly, disturbingly imaginative and I am all the way here for it.

By the author of the critically acclaimed Border Trilogy, Child of God is a taut, chilling novel that plumbs the depths of human degradation. Lester Ballard, a violent, solitary and introverted young backwoodsman dispossessed on his ancestral land, is released from jail and allowed to haunt the hill country of East Tennessee, preying on the population with his strange lusts. McCarthy transforms commonplace brushes with humanity - in homesteads, stores and in the woods - into stunning scenes of the comic and the grotesque, and as the story hurtles toward its unforgettable conclusion, depicts the most sordid aspects of life with dignity, humour, and characteristic lyrical brilliance.

Tobias V. Langhoff

Another novel on the depravity of humans, this short novel competes for the title of "most gruesome McCarthy story" together with Blood Meridian and The Road. With a structure akin to No Country for Old Men, with action-packed chapters interspersed with monologues commenting on the story and its themes, as usual for McCarthy we follow one man and his misadventures on the fringes of civilized society. Here, this man is a serial killer and necrophiliac whose crazed mind we never penetrate.

McCarthy’s audiobooks are always narrated by some of the finest narrators around (including some of my favorites, Frank Muller, Richard Poe and Ed Sala), and Tom Stechschulte is no exception here. His Southern drawls and dialects give the story a very fitting palette

D D D 

** spoiler alert **
           Forgot cormac mccarthy was a sick freak. I liked this one, it was slow and easy in the way that all cormac mccarthy is, and the plot is revealed in a way that makes me think “ohhh THATS what’s happening” or think that maybe I’d missed something and perhaps I have. 

Something I love about cormac mccarthy is the image he creates. I can see it all so clearly! I enjoyed the ending to this one, though I wish he had just died in the cave. 

quick read

I won't call this a hopeful book by a long shot, but maybe you should read it if you think people are more evil nowadays than they have been in the past. Child of God is a gritty piece of literature and is a bit painful to read at times (especially since I grew up partly in East Tennessee and can picture these characters in living shoes), but there are some real nuggets of truth buried in the grime.

Also THIS BOOK IS HELLA TRIGGERING for me since I grew up in an environment similar to the place depicted in Child of God. Read with caution wrt sexual abuse, physical abuse, incestuous rape, murder, desecration of corpses, child abuse, animal cruelty.

Ashlyn

I won't call this a hopeful book by a long shot, but maybe you should read it if you think people are more evil nowadays than they have been in the past. Child of God is a gritty piece of literature and is a bit painful to read at times (especially since I grew up partly in East Tennessee and can picture these characters in living shoes), but there are some real nuggets of truth buried in the grime.

Also THIS BOOK IS HELLA TRIGGERING for me since I grew up in an environment similar to the place depicted in Child of God. Read with caution wrt sexual abuse, physical abuse, incestuous rape, murder, desecration of corpses, child abuse, animal cruelty.

McCarthy manages to create one of the most despicable characters in literature, and then uses him as a mirror to challenge readers to consider their own capacity for evil. In this harrowing descent into darkness, McCarthy forces his readers to wrestle with their beliefs on evil, human nature, and the possibility of redemption. Brutal, disturbing, and unforgettable. 

Brandon

Michael Springer

My review just got completely deleted. I'm starting over, and it will be EVEN BETTER maybe. 

There's a creek that winds along behind my parents house in downtown Indianapolis. It's barely more than a trickle, barely enough to get your feet wet when you're wearing shoes with thick soles. It was just wide enough that my ten year old self had to jump to make it across. But it was the wildest, most natural thing I'd known at that age, and I followed that son of a bitch. 

I walked down one direction to where it reached a sewage pipe. (This review will get gross. Let me warn you now.) Not to be deterred, I bought a flashlight from the grocery store and walked through the pipe for a long time, finally coming out on the other side of a busy road. Feeling accomplished, I walked back overground, knowing where my next adventure along the creek would start.

That was the pattern: I'd bike to the last place where I'd followed the creek, hide my bike, and then continue following. It became more and more time consuming as it wound farther and farther from our backyard. It became wider, wilder, as it went. One day, I came to an old tool box buried in the dirt. I dug it up, hoping to find some buried treasure, or at least some forgotten toys some other kid had buried. All I found inside was water and dirt, but I returned awhile later to put some treasure in the box: some old toys I didn't play with anymore. 

Eventually, I wandered down that creek far enough to reach the end in one direction. The narrow creek had gradually expanded by that point to ten or eleven feet across, but now it blossomed into a tremendous lake. Or so it seemed at the time. This small lake was surrounded by high grass, trees, some weed-like flowers, and a light dusting of garbage from downstream and from the nearest roads. You could see two busy roads far in the distance, but I wanted some private piece of nature bad enough that it felt to me like a nature preserve. I spent about half of the day exploring around the lake, and got in a shitstorm of trouble when I got back home. According to Mom, that wasn't a "lake" I'd been exploring; it was a "gravel pit," which was very "dangerous," and I should never go back. 

I went back. 

If I had to explain my love for McCarthy's writing, I don't know that I could. I could tell you that, ever since childhood, I've prefered the cracked and broken to the new and shiny. I could tell you I've written dozens of poems about moss and gravestones, and am uninterested in writing about anything much more complicated. It's an ingrained aesthetic, and I don't know what childhood trauma or early experience lies behind it, but it carries over into the books I read, the colors I like, and just about everything.

Anyway, to conclude my review of the book: Cormac McCarthy is me. Lester Ballard, his protagonist, is the river. Lester has gravel pits and leaves a nasty taste in your mouth, and he's not there to make you happy, but McCarthy pursues his dark character so perfectly that you kind of end up feeling for the backwoods pervert by the end of it all. (The river/Ballard is the pervert, not McCarthy/me.) 

This is yet another terrific book by McCarthy, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in reading about depraved backwoods hilljacks who do just about everything gross imaginable.

Kwan Ann Tan

Melody Izard

This is one of those books that, when you read it, and really like it, it makes you wonder if you should be worried about yourself. 

I mean it’s kind of like finding something brown and wondering if it might be chocolate and tasting it and discovering that it really is something vile and disgusting. But then you should have known better. I mean you found the brown thing on the floor, so there was no way you REALLY could have been expecting chocolate and then, Oh look! There’s another something brown and you taste it again! 

I mean this book is written by Cormac McCarthy – so I knew what it would be like. The main character is like those people you try to avoid in 
  The Road
 but this book takes place before whatever catastrophic happening brings down civilization. There’s necrophilia, incest, cross-dressing with a creepy twist and plenty of stinky bathroom references. But I might just read it again.

If you like this you should also read And the Ass Saw the Angel by Nick Cave and 
  Ironweed
 by William Kennedy.

Summer Stanley

Unusual and a bit disturbing, but completely engaging throughout.

Neva Davies

Caitlyn Johanna Bolton 

Not gonna lie, not my thing and I would not have picked this up if it weren't part of my TBR swap challenge this month.

With that said, I did enjoy the complex development of Ballard, I thought the way McCarthy's narrative matched the character was really interesting and a really good way to add a little extra development for him. 

I could also see some inspiration from the modernist genre which may have been an accident, but I did find it interesting.

The main thing that put me off was the way that he went on and on about certain, small events in the novel, such as the part with the blacksmith making the axe and the butcher packing up the meat cuts. I understand why they are there, but at the same time I felt like that level was unnecessary and got tedious. 

Overall, I didn't hate, but I didn't like it and it hasn't motivated me to pick up more of his work.

Child of God

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