Child of God, by Cormac McCarthy

I read Child of God, by Cormac McCarthy, because the older I get, the shorter life seems and the less patience I have for the ordinary when I could have something sublime.

Let my start by saying I laughed at the necrophilia scenes. Perhaps I should finish by saying that too. That one sentence will tell you whether this book is right for you or not.

McCarthy is famous for the violence of his writing. Quite a few critics point to Blood Meridian as the most violent book. Not just the most violent McCarthy book, but the most violent book.

I disagree. Now it has been many years since I read Blood Meridian, but I do not recall that one featuring a serial killer rapist who attempts to make sweet love to a corpse but keeps getting thwarted in Loony-Tunes-esque ways—forbidden desecratory love, but make it slapstick.

Child of God does not resonate for me as much as No Country for Old Men (the finest crime novel I have ever read) or The Road (with the scariest horror scene I have ever read), but even a lesser McCarthy is a magnificent thing. He is a prose stylist nonpareil. At times his sentences are straightforward and terse, the noun did the verb to the object, marching the plot forward in staccato steps. Without warning his sentences turn wavy, different lengths, new cadences. He describes the mundane throwaway details like a monk illuminating the serifs in his scroll.  

I did not read a print version, but when I checked the Wikipedia page, I found the passage that made me stop in my tracks and rewind the audio as I walked the dog the other day:

“He came up flailing and sputtering and began to thrash his way toward the line of willows that marked the submerged creek bank. He could not swim, but how would you drown him? His wrath seemed to buoy him up. Some halt in the way of things seems to work here. See him. You could say that he's sustained by his fellow men, like you. Has peopled the shore with them calling to him. A race that gives suck to the maimed and the crazed, that wants their wrong blood in its history and will have it. But they want this man's life. He has heard them in the night seeking him with lanterns and cries of execration. How then is he borne up? Or rather, why will not these waters take him?”

One final but crucial note: If you enjoy audiobooks, do not miss the Tom Stechschulte narration. He is one of my top five favorite narrators. Child of God is set in eastern Tennessee and he gets the accents right.