Child of God

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Product Details

Author : Cormac Mccarthy
Binding : Paperback
EAN : 9780679728740
Edition : Reprint
Number of Pages : 208
Product Group : Book
Publication Date : 1993-06-29
Publisher : Vintage
Release Date : 1993-06-29

ASIN : 0679728740

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Editorial Reviews

From Amazon.com

"Scuttling down the mountain with the thing on his back he looked like a man beset by some ghast succubus, the dead girl riding him with legs bowed akimbo like a monstrous frog." Child of God must be the most sympathetic portrayal of necrophilia in all of literature. The hero, Lester Ballard, is expelled from his human family and ends up living in underground caves, which he peoples with his trophies: giant stuffed animals won in carnival shooting galleries and the decomposing corpses of his victims. Cormac McCarthy's much-admired prose is suspenseful, rich with detail, and yet restrained, even delicate, in its images of Lester's activities. So tightly focused is the story on this one "child of God" that it resembles a myth, or parable. "You could say that he's sustained by his fellow men, like you.... A race that gives suck to the maimed and the crazed, that wants their wrong blood in its history and will have it."

Customer Reviews

Hauting, disturbing...like William Faulkner meets the Hills Have Eyes. (2007-12-11)

Excellent book. I'm not certain how long "Child of God" took McCarthy to write, but his prose truly develops into something wonderful about halfway through the book. Exceptionally written. An expert use of pathos.Highly recommended.

Dark, disturbing, haunting (2002-02-28)

There is no denying the strain of Faulkner that runs through McCarthy's early works; like his predecessor, McCarthy is concerned less with plot than with character and the many and sundry ways in which character and place (here, the hills of Eastern Tennessee) interact. But McCarthy is more fun to read; his prose is lean and lyric and leaves lasting images in the mind's eye. He does not shrink from displaying humanity in all its ugly (often ungodly) forms. "Child of God" is best-known for its haunting portrayal of necrophilia--few writers could address so ghastly an act in such beautiful, elegant prose. But that is one of the great joys of Cormac McCarthy's early novels--they are not so much tours de force as they are exhibitions of beautifully painted landscape and haunting, nightmarish imagery.

Chicken Soup For The Necrophiliacýs Soul (2002-02-16)

I read McCarthy's "Blood Meridian", loved it and decided to check out some of his other works. So I picked this up with huge expectations. In the end, I was not disappointed. Now, on with the review:

McCarthy seems to have taken bits of the life of Wisconsin killer, Ed Gein, combined them with bit of local (Tennessee) legend and created a very entertaining (albeit twisted) tale.

While this work is a little rough-around-the-edges (after about 30 pages that becomes part of its charm), it moves at a very lively pace, and is packed with some of the most disturbing (often done in an oddly humorous way) scenes ever put down on paper.

McCarthy has a great sense for rural America. Not that cute, Lake Wobegonish ruralism. This is closer to Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood". It may not be politically correct but Hillbillies are creepy and Lester Ballard, the novel's protagonist, is the creepiest Hillbilly.

The great thing about Lester is that he isn't blatantly good or evil, he's just lives from day-to-day not unlike an animal. Animals need to eat, sleep, and mate. Lester eats what he can shoot, sleeps in a shack on an old mattress and mates...well, that's were Lester's problems really manifest themselves. Let's just say that to every problem, there's a solution.

My only complaint is that a promising narrative device (using the locals to fill in Lester's past) is dropped early in the book. The final chapters (and, believe me, they are priceless) more than make up for this flaw.

So, if you're still wondering rather this book is worth purchasing, let me just quote Lester Ballard and say "Any time you get to feelin' froggy - jump."

Stretches the subject matter of fiction to its limits (2002-02-03)

I have read sevral of McCarthy's other novels. His best ones stretch something to the limit. In it was violence. Here it is simple depravity and lack of concern for other human beings. Lester Ballard is the ultimate user. Other people exist for him only to meet his needs, even if they are dead. I have never before read a book about necrophilia, and yes, as many of the other reviewers point out, reading this book takes a strong stomach. Yet McCarthy achieves something only the greatest writers can pull off, which is making an unsympathetic character sympathetic. Totally in spite of myself, I found myself cheering Ballard on when he outwits the lynch mob and gets away. The only thing I can imagine more outrageous than this book is a sympathetic portrayal of a child molester. Yet, I believe that this is ultimately a spiritual book. I don't think the title is meant to be ironic. I think we are meant to see that even Lester Ballard really is a child of God.

Intense and disturbing (2001-12-28)

This is a gripping novel that probes the breadth of human depravity and perversity while plunging the reader into a malevolent and sinister world. Lester Ballard is a deeply deranged and demented individual with sexually perverse lusts that resides in the Eastern Tennessee countryside. He's accused of rape, imprisoned for a short time, then released after which he commits unspeakable acts against his fellow man. It's doubtful his incarceration had anything to do with his behavior since it's obvious from the start this man is troubled. This is a wonderful novel filled with effective imagery and stunning descriptiveness. I found the chapter where the town sheriff, deputy and old Mr. Wade rowing the boat through the flooded town streets to be quite interesting. A recommended book, but beware the subject matter is quite graphic and might not be suitable for those without strong stomachs.

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