Child of God Reviews

• Not Faulkner Lite

  
  By A1NPNGWBVD9AK3 on 2000-12-08
  Cormac McCarthy is one of the most accessible of modern authors. This in no way diminishes his accomplishments, as he is adept at so many facets of the writer's art. His prose blends perfectly the spare and the lyrical. His pacing is flawless. The reader is swept up into his cadences, secure in the knowledge that he/she will be expertly guided through the thickets and brambles to the clearing ahead, also assured that there would be no needless detours along the way. We are never overburdened with needless detail. Characters are believable and delineated concretely. The reader's senses are awakened to sensory impressions that are visceral. We "remember" what he describes.

  is a great example of this master storyteller's art. It is a novel without any hint at artifice. It can be read by virtually anyone. What distinguishes it from equally "accessible" works is that it can be read on so many levels. In other words, it is a work that naturally has broad appeal. It will appeal to those who enjoy reading about disturbed murderers and psychopaths. On the other hand it will hold enormous interest to readers who are thoroughly familiar with the Southern Gothic fiction of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor. Not to denigrate McCarthy, but on the surface, this work might even be called "Faulkner Lite." McCarthy's acknowledgment to Faulkner in fact occurs in the opening sentence of the novel (which also happens to be the work's longest sentence) < They came like a caravan of carnival folk up through the swales of broomstraw and across the hill in the morning sun, the truck rocking and pitching in the ruts and the musicians on chairs in the truckbed teetering and tuning their instruments, the fat man with the guitar grinning and gesturing to others in a car behind and bending to give a note to the fiddler who turned a fiddlepeg and listened with a wrinkled face. > This alliterative run-on is clearly McCarthy's way of paying homage to the master.

  Like Faulkner and O'Connor, this novelist peoples his fiction with grotesque, or at the least, exaggerated characters. The Cornelius Suttree of the novel could just as easily be a member of the Sutpen family in Faulkner. And the main character in this work, Lester Ballad, is every bit as amoral and unconcerned with human life as is "The Misfit" in "A Good Man is Hard to Find." In fact, if one were looking for a literary model for Lester Ballad, one should turn to O'Connor before going to Hannibal Lecter. Ballard is a kind of amalgam of The Misfit and Harper Lee's Boo Radley, the "child of God" sequestered away in . The difference being that whereas Boo Radley was only a scarecrow, Ballard is something far more sinister and malignant.

  Malignancy, in fact, is what this novel is about essentially. Lester Ballard is a tumor that has been growing and festering within the body of the community. He is a case of "out of sight, out of mind." Because he has been repeatedly shunted off by the insular southern town that McCarthy depicts, he is free in his isolation to let his psychotic mind's tendrils expand and propagate unchecked. McCarthy's underlying message may be that the more we neglect those on the periphery of society, the more we invite evil into our lives. The very title of the book seems to beg the question. It recalls in some respects Christ's warning/appeal that "as you do unto the least of these (God's children), so you do unto me." So in a very large sense, Lester Ballard represents every street-person you pass in San Francisco or New York or wherever you happen to be a member of a larger community. Ballard is in this sense more avenging angel than irredeemable villain. The malignancy is growing in our collective communities, for the most part unseen, but festering, nevertheless. The greater our neglect, the greater the chance for evil rebounding upon us.

  If you have not read McCarthy, this is a great place to start. You can read this novel in one or two sittings, as it flows so smoothly and uninterruptedly that you will not even notice that he is planting these seeds of inquiry as you are rolling along. Yet after you put the book down, you will no doubt take away a lot more than you noticed in passing.
  
  

• Loveless.

  
  By A1R6E5S8WLUXEX on 2000-10-07
  McCarthy even goes so far as to force the reader to *identify* with Lester Ballard.... Not Ballard the serial killer, or Ballard the necrophiliac, but rather that "misplaced and loveless simian" scavenging the Tennessee backwoods for some handhold of purpose and adulation. A grizzled wood troll haunting the rutted roads of civilized men, he becomes a secret collector of beautiful objects, the corpses of his victims laid alongside stuffed animals won at the county fair (Ballard is an expert marksman). He may even have found a place for himself in the "mountain man" communities of old, tending his kudzu and hunting hare and squirrel in the frigid hill country, in a land bereft of money and property (Ballard's madness is ignited by the foreclosure and auctioning off of his family estate in the opening chapter). As it is, civilization has encroached to dislodge his persona, making him the free captain of this Hell ship, a soul-shaking Southern gothic if there ever was one.

  McCarthy presents us with such an unforgettable case-study of an irredeemably *loveless* existence. Lester Ballard, like all alienated citizens who murder their own, is *our* monster, the watchman and exterminating angel of our own pat, irrational, self-satisfied civil society. Unlike most purveyors of the mass-murderer yarn, McCarthy's austere, hacksaw language cuts a heinously convincing, but always humanistic portrayal of mental illness stemming from the most extreme alienation, urging us to forget Bret Easton Ellis, to dismiss Hannibal Lecter, the figure of Lester Ballard striking to the heart of things with each finely minutia'd stab of chiseled prose, a star of madness in this, the most legitimate representation of a lone wolf serial-killer you will ever read.
  
  

• why random violence exists in the world

  
  By on 1999-08-10
  No one finishes Child of God with an indifferent impression. Usually I'm sad to finish a good book, but I was happy when this one was over. Child of God is not a modern day morality tale but a complex book that produces a healthy confusion of pleasure and disquietude. The pleasure is derived from the beautiful language, language especially effective when used to describe a character. It's the subject matter which made my mind uncomfortable. The details are too real, the subject too macabre for a moral human to enjoy. At times Lester Ballard seems closer to the "sympathetic apes" in the story than to a man with a conscience. The first sentence and last twenty pages alone are worth the purchase price of the book; what comes in between will race your pulse and curdle your stomach. Don't read this on a camping trip in the woods, but read it.
  
  

• Brilliant, fascinating, not for everybody.

  
  By A2SHDW1E4I4M4U on 1999-04-19
  "Child of God" is the story of Lester Ballard, outcast, necrophiliac, and psychopath in the Tennessee mountains. I'm sure some people would find this subject matter repellent, but I think the book has just enough of a lyrical quality to keep it from being too distasteful. In the hands of a less talented writer, it could have degenerated into a silly Stephen King-type horror story. In about two hundred pages, Cormac McCarthy creates a powerful and vivid portrait of a twisted individual, one I don't think I'll ever forget. This book is a perfect companion piece to his earlier novel "Outer Dark." (Both of these books would make great movies.)
  
  

• Chicken Soup For The Necrophiliac�s Soul

  
  By A1XTLPXADYVJ68 on 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."
  
  

• Grotesque masterpiece.
  By A16JVZ67C5OJVY on 2000-04-17
  This may be the scariest ride in contemporary American fiction. A tale of the crazed Lester Ballard and his gradual slide into absolute depravity--necrophilia is just the beginning of it--this is dark, dark stuff. It could have been merely a freak show in prose, but fortunately we're in the hands of a master stylist, who makes this a rich, haunting, blackly comic experience. Nor is the violence extraneous to the point, as McCarthy puts forth the notion that even a Lester Ballard--"a child of God much like yourself perhaps"--may somehow occupy a vital place in the human family. A first-rate novel.
  
  
• Dark, disturbing, haunting
  By A107C4RVRF0OP on 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.
  
  
• I had nightmares but couldn't stop reading. And then I read it again. And again and again.
  By A2FNA5903D9E6Y on 2007-06-05
  "The travails of a homeless, retarded necrophiliac killer roaming the hills of Kentucky. It sounds like a joke but somehow, it's not. (Though, if I were John Waters, I'd option it immediately.) Not only do you take this ghoul seriously, once you're halfway through the book, you realize you're on his side. Without psychologizing, or even getting into the protagonist's completely non-reflective head, McCarthy makes us understand him; what he's doing makes total sense to him, given what he knows. He comes to seem merely an extreme version of all people - blind, cosmically and comically ignorant, doing what makes sense to us given what we know."
  - Mary Gaitskill From The Salon**com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors, pg 156.
  
  
  Mary Gaitskill has given the best description of this novel that I've read anywhere, going so far as to suggest that it almost seems jokey in description. I can roughly imagine what would happen to someone trying to pitch this idea to a publisher or a producer today. Almost.
  
  I will say this with absolute certainty: this book is a MASTERPIECE. McCarthy is a master. He is a master of language most of all. He is a master of manipulation. He's given us a character nearly void of emotion and interior and yet we find ourselves choking on our own emotions.
  
  Lester Ballard's existence in Child of God is spare, fragile. McCarthy's depiction of Lester's interior is even sparer - like bones bare of tissue and muscle - a skeleton of conjoined events void of excess flesh in both thought and description. Even the punctuation is spare. McCarthy takes us through the life of Lester Ballard, a disjointed creature surviving in the wild, by delicately weaving a story that is, at once, full of despair and depravity yet lyrically beautiful, ruthlessly harsh and stunningly exquisite in its physical depiction of nature.
  
  I am overwhelmed by McCarthy's mastery of minimalism in his choices of what information to give to the reader about or even from Lester. In Child of God, McCarthy never really tells you what Lester looks like, is thinking, wearing or feeling in any absolute form unless it is entirely necessary. I've read the book several times now. I still don't know for certain what Lester Ballard looks like. I don't know what color his hair is. Or his eyes. I don't know how tall he is other than not very. And really, none of this matters.
  
  Without getting into specifics, I will say that this book is a very upsetting book to read. The main character, Lester, commits acts that are of the most disturbing nature one can (or in my case, never thought I could) imagine. And my warning is that it is NOT for everyone. Those who can step into the darkness of Lester's existence will experience words so thoughtfully joined, so carefully drawn and pared to their most delicate state. A tale unlike any other. One of the most finely crafted novels I've ever read.
  
  On that note, Mary Gaitskill said it and I agree. So, here are my top ten reasons why John Waters should make Child of God, the movie:
  
  10. Celluloid goldfish
  9. Demon yodelers
  8. Mountain gnomes who dress in leaves
  7. Use of the term "follerin"
  6. Testicles referred to as "cods"
  5. Women named Urethra, Cerebella and Hernia Sue
  4. Men in drag (down to the undies) and frightwigs ("fashioned" from dried human scalps)
  3. Frozen gals
  2. A cannibal in the cage next door
  
  And the number 1 reason:
  
  1. Dialogue that contains:
  Say you want to blow me?
  I said owe.
  
  
  
• Necromaniacs Rejoice!
  By A3PVSNS17HCIXN on 2006-07-01
  Ever hear of Ed Gein? If not this book will be a suprise to you. I was recommended Child of God by a friend. What is at first a simple story about an awful, troll-like man living in a shack becomes a story about an awful, troll-like man who loses his shack and goes to live in a cave, which soon becomes a kind of harem where he keeps the corpses of his dead lovers. You guessed it, necrophilia. With Mccarthy's typically poetic verse, the story is made all the more unsettling with great dashes of prentension thrown in. It's not his best, and suffers from the same problems I typically find in Mccarthy's work. It's a bit boring at times. The above noted pretension is laid on pretty thick - so many incomplete sentences. Certainly not a book for everyone, but certainly one worth a look if you're a Mccarthy fan or someone just into reading about dispicable necromaniacs. Hey, whatever floats your boat.
  
  
• A Spellbinder
  By on 2000-01-10
  It may be an understatement to say that Child Of God "plumbs the depths of human degradation." Cormac McCarthy's story is shocking and disturbing. It is not a novel for the squeamish. But the writing is superb and the story is riveting. The richness of the vocabulary (often sending me to the dictionary for a word that wasn't there). The dialect ("It's possible. I'd say it might could)." The blacksmith scene. The glimpses into Lester Ballard's twisted mind. This is a book I'll never forget. It was my first exposure to McCarthy. It won't be my last.
  
  
• the bond of depravity
  By A1WAS6Z5L6QYVQ on 2001-06-06
  McCarthy has taken not just the grotesque, but the disgusting, and worked wonders. He points us to our own human depravity through the example of the grendel-like character of Lester Ballard, and by making us care for so lost and lonely a soul. I was horrified not just by Lester and the other characters in the book, but by the realization McCarthy created in me that the line between me and Lester is a thin one, and it may not even exist. If you have a strong stomach I encourage you to read this book, and if you don't, you might want to think about making the sacrifice for the sake of seeing something beautiful and profound in the filth of humanity and reality. -sc
  
  
• McCarthy, a brave writer with an incredible constitution
  By A1T71EWZZLG0IW on 2005-07-25
  I was initiated into the world of Cormac McCarthy with this novel in Southern Lit class. My professor was the vice president of the Cormac McCarthy Appreciation Society and considers McCarthy one the most talented novelists of the twentieth century, as do I. This work is very much a product of an evolved understanding of Faulkner. It incorporates all of the typical faulknarian literary elements and subject matter, but stretches and evolves them to an unusually intense point. There is a message about decay, especially of the south in the diction, especially where the flood and the degeneration of Lester Ballard are concerned. There is Old South v. New South and the post reconstuction circumstances of the south with the disposession of Ballard. There is also lust here, something that Faulkner tackeled in a more subtle manner than McCarthy in the Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. However, McCarthy's story of lust is intense and grotesque and is described without sentiment in an amazing display of the gift of total candor. McCarthy is nothing short of stoic in his descriptions and must posess an amazing constitution, as he has the ability to write what would make most of us vomit just thinking about. The ability to reduce a human character to the lowest common denomimnator, performing unspeakable acts of depravity and at the same time remaining a valid character whose presence still carries a literary message and a human one as well, is the most unique of gifts. This novel may be hard to take for the faint of heart, but it is well worth the read. It is haunting to the reader, not for its perverse subject matter, but for its understated messages, masterfully placed in the character of Lester Ballard, a disposessed and depraved madman, holding the dark secrets of what humanity can be driven to.
  
  
• Depraved and Disturbing but essentially Riveting
  By A1KKSZCWTDPMGJ on 2007-02-17
  The plot of this book is highly disturbing: a man is turned out of his home and through a series of events (and perhaps a natural inclination to the perverse) he becomes a serial killer/necrophiliac/vagrant. But McCarthy is so adept at storytelling that even the most macabre aspects of this story read rather poetically and somehow the reader is made sympathetic to the grotesque plight of a heretofore unheard of anti-hero.
  
  The pacing is excellent: the text is sparse, composed into short, jarring chapters that propel an already engaging narrative.
  
  In the end, it's a neat little book that packs a hell of a punch with a premise that lingers and disturbs.
  
  
• Tom Sawyer in Hell
  By A2HII4U9WQ0XUV on 2007-03-23
  This is what I was going to write as the first line of review, after the first raw, stinking, reeking blast of "Child of God" hit me:
  
  "Cormac McCarthy is such a satanically gifted writer that he could churn out a phonebook & it would be compulsively readable. That's the good news. The bad news is 'Child of God' is that phonebook."
  
  "Child of God" is not where I would recommend a McCarthy neophyte to start with the author: it's deeply twisted, in its own way both blunt and inscrutable, meandering, and apparently plotless, or so it seems at first, winding its way from rustic outrage to wilderland depravity, with very little in the way of sympathetic creatures to cling to.
  
  I gave up on it, tossed it aside---but came back to it a week later, in the mood for something truly monstrous. "Child of God" fit the bill.
  
  Remember Injun Joe from Twain's "Tom Sawyer"? Injun Joe was a monster, a villain clambered up out of Hell, as cunning as he was murderous. But did you ever think Mark Twain may have been too gentle-hearted to let us in on the *real* story---the one not for thd squeamish, the one where Injun Joe wins, & slakes his diseased lusts on poor Tom & Becky in the night-gaunt caverns?
  
  Think of "Child of God" as that apocryphal nightmare chapter of "Tom Sawyer", where McCarthy's wild-eyed, cross-dressing hillbilly necronaut Lester Ballard serves as a kind of tourguide & lodestone of human vileness. Ballard, forged from flesh in God's image, is dispossessed, his farm foreclosed, and so begins a wild, hallucinatory pilgrimage of mass-murder & sexual perversion.
  
  Give this one some time: it's not mere brutal narrative. Cormac McCarthy doesn't just write something down without saying something far deeper, and I think "Child of God" is the perfect anodyne to the fever dream of the Noble Savage: here proof, proof!---that Man in the state of Nature is Nasty, Brutish, & Short. Ballard, literally, is all three.
  
  But one final thought: Ballard is a creature of the elements. He moves like a creature of myth, the satyr, the troll, the troglodyte, through the thickets & swamplands & burrows like a deranged mole deep into the Earth, to recruit his strength, to plot, to scheme, and to attack, he bids the rain fall hard and it floods; he bids the snow to fall faster and it cloaks his tracks; he implores God for a victim to die, and she does.
  
  Who is to say this Child isn't God Himself, sheathed in flesh & wrath & lust & Death for this rustic Second Coming?
  
  
  JSG
  
  
• A grotesque masterpiece
  By on 2000-07-01
  Cormac McCarthy, the heir to the Faulknerian tradition (and, in my opinion, a better artist than its founder), has created what is perhaps the most disturbing and beautiful novel to come out in the last fifty years. Dealing gracefully, even sympathetically, with something as heinous as necrophilia, McCarthy makes us feel what Lester Ballard is feeling. You could say that Ballard is the hero, or the antihero, but that kind of [stuff] is exactly what makes me want to stay as far away from "normal" literary criticism. This novel is too complex, too finely put together, to be pigeonholed by the literary crowd. Read it for the language, read it for the moral complexity, but read it.
  
  
• Stretches the subject matter of fiction to its limits
  By A6YBA8W9V0TRC on 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.
  
  
• Delightfully Haunting
  By A2AUZFB3DKD944 on 2007-10-23
  'Child of God' is not for the squeamish. Similarly, it's not for people looking for a 'Gore-Fest' of epic proportions. The violence is not staged or sensationalized.
  
  Since the main character is dim, much of the violence, subsequently, is told in a dull, hum-drum sort of manner.
  
  But it is violent. That is not to be forgotten. 'Child of God' is a study of violence and death, and it is as hilarious as it is abhorrent. The people, mostly, are poor, hateful, apathetic, and vile. Especially the main character.
  
  Being from the South, I can relate to the verisimilitude McCarthy attributes to the speech patterns of his characters. You thought I was going to say I could relate to the necrophilia, didn't you?
  
  No, I can't, though McCarthy paints the main character favorably. I thought the story is very tightly written and quick to get through. The little stories that veer off-plot are entertaining and add a certain amount of depth to an otherwise sparse tale.
  
  It's unfortunate, though, that McCarthy is often deemed Faulkner-Light. That's hardly the truth. While it is true that he writes - in this novel, for sure - phonetically, there's a chasm that exists between the two authors. One is not better than the other. They are different, though not to the casual reader, I suppose.
  
  I read this book in two days, couldn't put it down. I hope you'd do the same. It's excellent.
  
  
• Better than promised
  By on 1999-06-27
  One reviewer said that the book "grabbed you from the first sentence," and it's true. I was impressed by the elegance of this extremely spare prose. The scene in the blacksmith's shop is a minor masterpiece, and could easily stand alone as a short story. It's hard to imagine better writing than this.
  
  
• You want the necrophiliac to escape?
  By A3OPB9JECFJEHK on 2006-10-21
  McCarthy's writing and portrayal of Lester Ballard, a necrophiliac, is so well done that when the townfolk are after him you want him to escape. And then you have to wonder...why am I siding with a necrophiliac of all people? The writing is up to the high standards expected of McCarthy, and as usual he plumbs darker side of the human psyche. The book has an interesting twist to the plot - Ballard is falsely accused of rape, his house is auctioned off and he's left as a social outcast, an animal. He is removed of all his ties to humanity and so becomes the animal. If you like books that deal with the darker side of life then give this a read.
  
  
• Less than what I expected
  By A3SI6F1RGCTAOH on 2007-06-20
  This is the first early book of McCarthy's I've read, and part of me is curious to read "The Orchard Keeper" and "Outer Dark," his first two books. But I don't know that I will. The main reason is that "Child of God," when compared to "All the Pretty Horses," "The Crossing," or even "City of the Plain" (which I thought was the least interesting of the border trilogy) comes up short. Though perhaps comparing "Child of God" to the trilogy is unfair. A better comparison would be "Blood Meridian." But when measured against "Blood Meridian," "Child of God" appears shallow, interesting only for its mood, moments of brilliant imagery and grotesque content.
  
  Child of God hints at McCarthy's future works and is interesting within the context of those works, as a measure of the writer's developing craft and vision. But, unlike his later work, "Child of God" never really gets off the ground. The facts of the story are credibly wrought, the writing is stylistic and at times engaging, there are several striking images. But that's it. The story of the recluse, Lester Ballard, and his necrophilia set against a backdrop of a mountain community in the gothic south, would appear to be enough. But there is no transcendence. The novel is little more than reporting of events. We do not know Lester's motivations. His movement from simple recluse to murderer occurs almost coincidently. There is no struggle within Lester. There is no moral clarity offered by the narrator. The reader is not encouraged toward sympathy for Lester. There is no real tension. And for that, the novel fails.
  
  When I consider "Child of God" within the context of "Blood Meridian," trying to point to where the one book succeeds and the other fails (they both after all deal on a fundamental level with the extremes of violence and human depravity) I think of two fundamental differences that work to create the tension and transcendence necessary in a successful novel: character insight and exploration of theme.
  
  In "Blood Meridian," The Kid and The Judge slip farther and farther into a world that is violent and chaotic. As they slide farther into that world, they work to define it and themselves within it. They work to define the world through their own explications in thought and dialogue coupled with the writer's use of imagery, action and fable-like anecdotes. The result is a sense of movement and struggle, a wrestling with grand ideas, a fully formed world in which fully formed individuals--with motivations, with pasts, with futures--are driven toward action.
  
  The protagonist in "Child of God" is not entirely sane, and though I don't believe it is ever stated, Lester is most likely mentally retarded or at least slow. There is no exploration of grand ideas. No theme. His past and future are only sketched. I suppose perhaps McCarthy might be suggesting that Lester is a child of God, and that the reader must then work to make his own moral judgments regarding Lester. But the guy is so awful and his actions so undeniably reprehensible, I doubt that very many readers spend all that much time wondering just where Lester belongs. Rather than reading his earlier works, I may pick up his latest book.
  
  
• Mesmerized with every word. Couldn't put it down.
  By A8SDALRZ3L4TQ on 2007-08-23
  I feel like I have missed out on one of the most incredibly talented authors alive today. I now plan on reading all of Cormac McCarthy's books.
  I began with "The Road" because of Oprah. I was then drawn to "Child of God" because of the title. I thought perhaps it was spiritual. To my surprise it brought me inside the life of a poor sad soul who is deeply disturbed and incredibly lonely.I lived in his cave of darkness with him and identified with his morbid existence as I cooked and cleaned house for my seven children and husband. I would look up from the deep dark book in my lap and gaze around at my family. How could I read such a grotesque book? How could I not? I couldn't put the book down. I wanted it to continue when it was over. It was inspirational and led me back to my writing. I admire the mind of Cormac McCarthy. This book let my mind travel down a road I couldn't have possibly imagined traveling on. A must read.
  
  
• A dark, bitter tale of good and evil
  By AEQFYOI6YJ83Z on 2008-01-19
  Saying that "Child of God" is about good and evil may sound a bit pretentious. Indeed, this tale of Lester Ballard, an outcast from society, doesn't seem too high-handed at first. It initially comes off as a gritty, honest portrayal of a man driven to murder and necrophilia. It's a bit hard to read, both due to imagery and language; readers will wince at the horrible scenes as much as the complicated dialogue and phrasing.
  
  But that's just Cormac McCarthy for you; his grasp on the English language is unparalleled in today's literary circles, and at times is daunting, a puzzle that must be unravelled. Therein lies half the fun. The other half is putting the novel down and thinking about what you've read. "Child of God" makes us question our own humanity; like McCarthy's more recent "The Road," or any other of his novels, it makes you wonder what you yourself are capable of doing, if driven to your outermost limits. Is this an easy read? No, not hardly. But is it a worthwhile read? Oh, most definitely. Cormac McCarthy is one of the few fiction writers today who genuinely has something to say, and who won't beat you over the head with it; he'll say his piece, then leave it up to you to figure it out. That's one of the things that makes great literature so great.
  
  
• Disturbing
  By A114YQ7ZT9Y1W5 on 2008-02-06
  Cormac McCarthy fuses Faulknerian dialog with the violence of Sade in this particularly gruesome and short novel. This novel's critical acclaim is probably nothing more than the combination of McCarthy's considerable technical skills and the shock value of the content. The 'protagonist' engages in violent rape, murder, and necrophilia in this repugnant piece of literary stylism. I could not put it down but I also could not help from thinking that it is ultimately a thin achievement.
  
  
• Pulchrum est paucorum hominum.
  By on 2000-04-02
  "Child of God" defies, perhaps more forbiddingly than any other work in McCarthy's magisterial corpus, the fashionable impertinence which not infrequently inspires the facile elicitation of ideological structure from his text. Besides having, among living writers of the English language, the strongest claim to deferred mortality, McCarthy's most unassailable works -- "Blood Meridian," "Outer Dark," and "Child of God" -- are, for their predestined readers, a stringent and edifying disinfectant against the sterile prevailing trends of literary criticism.
  
  
• McCarthy's Argument with God
  By A2BPRYDPLUGJKF on 2001-11-19
  The works of Cormac McCarthy, America's greatest living writer, brim with violence, cruelty and depravity. However, McCarthy is fundamentally a religious writer, whose great themes are sin, wonder and the presence (or absence) of God. Here, his narrative concerns the dark pilgrimage of one Lester Ballard, a Tennessee hillbilly who slips into murder and madness, but is still "a child of God, much like yourself." McCarthy finds his mature and distinctly American voice here, a lyrical distillate of Joyce through Faulkner, tempered with the more clipped cadences of a Hemingway, and steeped in a Catholic Jansenist gloom. A brief, riveting masterwork.
  
  
• Peter Smith hardcover WARNING!!!
  By AYRPJESM22ERK on 2001-11-27
  If you're considering buying the Peter Smith "edition" of this book, note that it is NOT a new "edition" in hardcover but the Vintage International edition rebound in red cloth, with the cover of said trade paperback glued onto the front. It looks like it's been rebound for libraries, is the type of thing that's usually not for sale to the general public (. . .) The book is WELL-REBOUND, and may still be worth it to you Cormac McCarthy diehards out there -- it is for me, and ultimately I'm just gonna keep the copy of it I bought, but it's still quite disappointing. Thought you deserved a warning, hope it came in time. McCarthy's a great writer, of course -- feel a little guilty about the one-star, but it's an issue of the edition, not the book.
  
  
• Low brow and juvenile
  By A1LANAAUNV92CU on 2006-09-27
  Do you giggle uncontrollably when poking corpses with a stick? If so, look no further, this book is for you.
  
  I understand a book like this will appeal to a certain demographic. I guess I shouldn't have expected much, and I certainly didn't expect a literary masterpeice, but this was the first book in awhile I just felt like giving up on. I didn't, since it's so short, but I may just as well have. It is not that the book is so "grotesque" or "disturbing" as seen described elsewhere. The author either left out or was incapable of the proper narrative to make the potentially disturbing scenes at all vivid. Unfortunately, that applies to all aspects of this book.
  
  The entire book is in rural vernacular, including ignoring proper punctuation. But the end result is that nothing is described in any detail. It's like reading a poorly worded list of stuff that happened. It's almost as if he wasn't really trying very hard, or as if the story really was told by a simpleminded country person - an omniscient one that can read people's minds. I suppose the idea could have worked, but doesn't. Not a terrible read, just annoying and vague. With so many other good books out there, why waste your time?
  
  
• Like an episode of Hee-Haw on crack...
  By ALOD3XMXDYK0D on 2007-01-08
  This is one of McCarthy's older novels but the major themes of his later work are all present: violence, lust, crime, law, the role of the outcast, the indifference of the cosmos ((and of God, if you will)), and, throbbing beneath it all, the great heart of darkness that keeps it all alive.
  
  In spare, poetic language, McCarthy tells an equally spare and poetic story about the life of a man who is quite literally a human monster--and all-too-human monster at that. And therein lies the "poetry." *Child of God* can be read as a literary gothic horror novel and indeed it contains elements of the horror genre from Frankenstein to Psycho to Silence of the Lambs to Saw. *Child of God* and the character of Lester Ballard may ultimately be more terrifying than any of them, however, inasmuch as McCarthy tempts us to do the most dangerous thing of all: sympathize with the 'monster' and the 'monstrous.'
  
  In brief chapters, McCarthy builds this gruesome story scene by scene like someone constructing a gallows. There are nature descriptions of breathtaking beauty. Episodes of harrowing action and viscerally shocking perversion. Candid `interviews' with the hicks, hillbillies, and good ole boys remembering Lester Ballard from way back when that'll have you laughing out loud. McCarthy hits all the notes in this short symphony of what is not so much an illustration of the `banality of human evil' as it is the absurdity of human evil.
  
  As realistic as an axe blade, and as disturbing as finding blood and human hair on that axe blade, *Child of God* is a horror novel in the most absolute and artistic sense...a masterpiece that lays bare the "horror" at the heart of human nature.
  
  
• Disturbing but Didactic
  By A1K4HRTFI7KTIR on 2007-01-10
  McCarthy's simple syntax tells the story of Lester Ballard. His tale is very disturbing, but it also provides the insight into the lives of those we'd rather pretend don't exist. McCarthy makes us open our eyes and identify who really is a child of God. A good read.
  
  
• Not my taste.
  By A12TC6DEFVZBKU on 2007-02-20
  I found this author coarse & rambling. Subject matter disturbing with no point or redeeming qualities. I really wish I had not bought this book.
  
  

• Outer Dark
• Suttree
• Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
• The Orchard Keeper
• No Country for Old Men (Vintage International)