A review by Bob Tedder • To truly appreciate Cormac McCarthy one should eschew the much-ballyhooed cinematic adaptations of his “No Country for Old Men” and “The Road” and turn to the written word. Consider the sheer craftsmanship of the following sentence: “Wasps pass through the laddered light from the barnslats in a succession of strobic moments, gold and trembling between black and black, like fireflies in the serried upper gloom.” Even when ripped willy-nilly from McCarthy’s “Child of God,” such descriptive narrative renounces the picture-and-a-thousand-word axiom familiar to all.
Do not, however, be lulled into complacency by his abilities to transfigure the commonplace into pastoral tranquility. For it is in this very same short book – “Child of God” is only 197 pages – one discovers McCarthy filigreeing the dark recesses of Southern Gothic with grotesqueries that surpass appalling. Even with this foreknowledge and the understanding that uneasiness at best and disgust at worst are hallmarks of McCarthy’s style, the casual reader may find a certain degree of alarm when realizing they are on the brink of sympathy with a main character who is a murderer and a necrophiliac. I certainly did.
But such is the story of prideful mountain man Lester Ballard of Sevier County, Tenn. Introduced as “a child of God much like yourself perhaps,’’ Ballard is seen skulking the outskirts of a foreclosure auction depriving him of his land. Turned squatter and social pariah, Ballard inevitably yields to the push of societal imperatives and the pull of his hidden nature. Led inexorably to the turnaround on Frog Mountain Road (the local lovers’ lane) there follows a sequence of eavesdroppings, peepings and Onanistic dalliances that literally allows the reader to witness Ballard’s return to caveman status.
Regardless of his macabre choice of subject, McCarthy’s ability to limn the indescribable cannot be denied. With that caveat in mind, and after a liberal application of thumb sanitizer, this one gets the standard pollical approval.
We’ll loan you a copy of the book if you stop by the Paw.