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3.37 AVERAGE
3.37 AVERAGE
I have yet to find anyone who writes like Cormac. His prose is the perfect balance of description and poetry. It is so beautiful but not abstract enough to draw you out of the narrative.
This novel is not of my favorites of his that I have read so far, but it is still so good. You feel as though you are living in pre war Tennessee with these characters, and growing up alongside the boy trapping critters and learning about those around him.
This novel is not of my favorites of his that I have read so far, but it is still so good. You feel as though you are living in pre war Tennessee with these characters, and growing up alongside the boy trapping critters and learning about those around him.
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Flowery and dense, and as much as I’m not into endless moody descriptions of wildlife (and there’s admittedly way too much here), there’s some pretty writing to be found here. It’s at times hard to follow, but if this is McCarthy’s worst then consider my interest piqued, because for a debut he seems to have his voice down.
2.5 out of 5
Gross Old Tennesseans
2.5 out of 5
Gross Old Tennesseans
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
On a scale of solely literary books, maybe a 3/5. But it's hard to rate anything CM wrote below about a 4/5 due to writing strength alone.
McCarthy's first published novel, it has all the aspects of his later writing, but congealed with an extra coating of thickness in the prose that his subsequent books would shed.
His later books feature an economy of prose without reaching Hemingway levels of sparse, and that's missed a little bit here. The writing is still gorgeous, powerful, but the richness gets a little cloying at times. Thick and chewy; some days a single page was all my senses could take. Bring a dictionary.
The Faulkner influences are very clear here, but to call it an imitation (as some critics did when it was published) is unfair. Faulkner's characters were allegorical stand ins for various traits of the American south, whereas here CM's characters feel more like actual people unwittingly playing out a Biblical morality tale. There's definitely more modernist styling here than his other work though.
When it comes to modern classics, there's a spectrum between "books you can read and simply enjoy" and "books you need to be actively engaging with the themes to get much out of," and this one is closer to the analysis required side. The Road can be simply read; The Orchard Keeper however has a fairly thin plot that almost doesn't make sense unless you're mentally referencing the themes. Just be warned there.
My main criticism is simply that it feels too much like a MFA thesis project, with powerful and clear themes, but less of a focus on also making a good yarn. He became a master of doing just that as time went by. But this one suffers ever so slightly from a thematic heavy handedness.
McCarthy's first published novel, it has all the aspects of his later writing, but congealed with an extra coating of thickness in the prose that his subsequent books would shed.
His later books feature an economy of prose without reaching Hemingway levels of sparse, and that's missed a little bit here. The writing is still gorgeous, powerful, but the richness gets a little cloying at times. Thick and chewy; some days a single page was all my senses could take. Bring a dictionary.
The Faulkner influences are very clear here, but to call it an imitation (as some critics did when it was published) is unfair. Faulkner's characters were allegorical stand ins for various traits of the American south, whereas here CM's characters feel more like actual people unwittingly playing out a Biblical morality tale. There's definitely more modernist styling here than his other work though.
When it comes to modern classics, there's a spectrum between "books you can read and simply enjoy" and "books you need to be actively engaging with the themes to get much out of," and this one is closer to the analysis required side. The Road can be simply read; The Orchard Keeper however has a fairly thin plot that almost doesn't make sense unless you're mentally referencing the themes. Just be warned there.
My main criticism is simply that it feels too much like a MFA thesis project, with powerful and clear themes, but less of a focus on also making a good yarn. He became a master of doing just that as time went by. But this one suffers ever so slightly from a thematic heavy handedness.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence
Moderate: Animal death
Set in the rural, poverty stricken foothills of the Smoky Mountains in 1930s Tennessee, the time and place of this book is foreign to me. More foreign to me is Cormac McCarthy’s overwrought and verbose writing style. (Fans would call it evocative and descriptive.) McCarthy’s reputation and the brooding red cover of this short novel drew me in, as I had read and enjoyed his book The Road a few years ago.
My problem is, I’m still not sure what The Orchard Keeper was about. Its defining feature is the author’s dense, extended descriptions of landscape, weather, and the minutiae of seemingly banal events.
For characters there are a couple of young male friends causing trouble. A bar that burns down. Hitchhikers who disappear. A dead body in a pond in a gravel quarry. An old man living alone in the woods. A bootlegger who gets arrested by the cops. How are they all connected? I’m not sure. Who was McCarthy talking about in any given scene? I’m also not sure.
I can appreciate McCarthy‘s skill as a gritty poet of earth-bound and outcast living, however I don’t aspire to it as a style of writing. It compelled me enough to read on, but it did not move me. I had to decide to read the slow moving and confusing scenes for an appreciation of the words alone, and not for plot or character development.
I’m always looking for a key take away in what I read. McCarthy’s style was my great inhibitor here. I could not find what was universal in this story about the human experience. Here’s my best effort: I sense in this novel an opportunity to reflect on and appreciate life amidst the ceaseless march of time and the small moments that make up the mosaic of our lives. A summer rain. The rustle of leaves under foot in the woods. Sunset. A flock of sparrows.
The characters and plot were as fleeting and ephemeral as McCarthy’s writing. Ghosts. Shadows. Just another part of the earth, which seems in The Orchard Keeper to be his true protagonist.
My problem is, I’m still not sure what The Orchard Keeper was about. Its defining feature is the author’s dense, extended descriptions of landscape, weather, and the minutiae of seemingly banal events.
For characters there are a couple of young male friends causing trouble. A bar that burns down. Hitchhikers who disappear. A dead body in a pond in a gravel quarry. An old man living alone in the woods. A bootlegger who gets arrested by the cops. How are they all connected? I’m not sure. Who was McCarthy talking about in any given scene? I’m also not sure.
I can appreciate McCarthy‘s skill as a gritty poet of earth-bound and outcast living, however I don’t aspire to it as a style of writing. It compelled me enough to read on, but it did not move me. I had to decide to read the slow moving and confusing scenes for an appreciation of the words alone, and not for plot or character development.
I’m always looking for a key take away in what I read. McCarthy’s style was my great inhibitor here. I could not find what was universal in this story about the human experience. Here’s my best effort: I sense in this novel an opportunity to reflect on and appreciate life amidst the ceaseless march of time and the small moments that make up the mosaic of our lives. A summer rain. The rustle of leaves under foot in the woods. Sunset. A flock of sparrows.
The characters and plot were as fleeting and ephemeral as McCarthy’s writing. Ghosts. Shadows. Just another part of the earth, which seems in The Orchard Keeper to be his true protagonist.
Interesting to read McCarthy’s first novel. It is certainly a glimpse into what’s to come in his books down the road.
adventurous
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
emotional
funny
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Astonishingly accomplished considering that this was McCarthy’s debut novel. His dense and detailed prose flows like poetry. His characters and this world he has created, although oblique at times, are so heavily detailed and lived in that you can almost see it, taste it and feel it yourself. My heart was pounding as the lives of our three main characters overlapped, all of them unknowingly connected by one horrible act of violence in the past. Absolutely wonderful.