Maybe sometimes a book is best left unread...
I enjoy really horrific books. I started reading Stephen King when I was about 15 and I read his Under the Dome when I was 17. If you have read that book, you know some of the scenes he described in that book is, well, unsavory.
But nothing really prepared me for Cormac McCarthy's Child of God...
I read his The Road and Sunset Limited a while ago, and I watched both movie adaptations. Both of which were challenging in their own ways.
When I searched some of the reviews for Child of God before I read the book, people said in one coherent voice:
After reading this book you will need to take a shower.
Naively, I thought how can a book be so bad that people almost unanimously mentioned the same thing?
As soon as I started reading this book, I felt a strange sort of grime cling to my body, I felt "dirty" reading it, almost like I just emerged from a dust storm. I felt disgusted, and strange, weird, and to be honest I am not sure how I felt...
If you have ever watched the equally degenerate film by Lars von Trier The House That Jack Built, you will like this book. As I read McCarthy's book, I could not get the images of Lars von Trier's film out of my head. There were so many similar scenes, not in an exact copy and paste fashion, but both main characters did similar things to their victims. Or, actually not, but I could not get the movie out of my head while reading the book.
To be honest, I am not sure how to write this review. There is not much to say about this book beyond the fact that it takes us on the sick adventures of a serial killer figure who terrorises the citizens of a town to such a point that one needs to wonder what McCarthy tried to do with this book. At least, that is what I was thinking.
As soon as I read the first scene in the book that got me wondering if I had the stomach to finish it, I turned to the front to see when the book was published. I was shocked to see how old the book actually was. Today, people squirm for anything, the smallest mention of something bad, and here McCarthy published a book that makes people feel unanimously "dirty", in need of a shower afterwards? I read American Psycho by Ellis a couple of years ago, and I felt strange reading some of the scenes, but most of the book was good and achieved what he set out to do. But again, this book constantly makes you feel disgusted and you question what went through the author's mind to have written such things.
I am not even going to attempt to give a summation of the acts described in the book because I am not comfortable writing such things.
And this book review really just regressed into my thoughts about how strange and disgusting the book is. So, in some sense, this is by no means a book review but loose feelings about my discomfort reading this book.
I am not going to recommend you to read this work. It is strange, odd, and with metaphorical book burnings going on in the world, I am not sure how this is not at the top of "degenerate" writings. McCarthy is a legend, and I have enjoyed so much of his work, but I am not sure I enjoyed this work.
And in some sense, we might argue that this is what he attempted to do. But I will counter this argument and ask, "Why is it necessary to have something like this on our shelves?"
Either way, happy reading and keep well!
All of the musings and writings are my own. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300.