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4.18 AVERAGE
4.18 AVERAGE
This novel is the literary equivalent of dropping acid. Sometimes incomprehensible, morose, and dirty, and that is exactly what it was meant to be. Set in the seedy underbelly of Chattanooga, TN, the main character will take you to places of total moral degeneracy and make you question if there is any goodness in human nature.
i needed a dictionary on the first page and a phD to finish the book...
I'd give it zero stars if I could. I've never such a visceral negative reaction to any book ever. When the boy starts...ahem...making sweet love to the pumpkins, I was done.
I could have read it much faster, but wanted to read it slower. It is a book to be savored. Cornelius Suttree is now one of my favorite characters.
challenging
dark
funny
reflective
It's still amazing. Suttree is such a fully realized and complicated character that he remains compelling after multiple reads. His story is epic and his meditations on death as well as his many encounters with it are so real and heart wrenching that to me they become the main focus of the novel. Mankind is surrounded by the specter of death at all times, yet despite of this, or perhaps because of it, man pursues life with everything at our disposal. It is beautiful, devastatingly sad, boisterous, rude, crude, and bursting at the seams with humor. Truly this book is a triumph.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A hellish descent into to the soul of a human being. Somewhere I read recently that people consider the character of Suttree as a villian; I do not agree. He is a true Everyman--if your view of the universe is very, very dark. He is Job, battling against the horrors that God throws at him. His landscape is so bleak that his brave acts of simply kindness stand as amazing beacons and testaments to a heart striving. Cormac McCarthy is our Shakespeare, his language, his images and the concordances he builds between the interior world of the human soul and the external world surrounding is magnificent.
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes