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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
I never really know what to say about McCarthy. This is intense and incredibly violent, and still so, so good.
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
tense
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
maybe the only truly perfect book on here. six stars, widens the scope of what fiction can be and raises the bar impossibly high. not only as good as everyone says, but somehow better
If this book was not beautifully and exquisitely written it would be a one star. If it wasn't filled with the most lavish and intricate descriptions of devestation and violence I have ever read it would be a one star. For this is an unkind book, this is a cruel book, this is a hateful book. In 350 pages it damns all of humanity and offers no signs of redemption or praise. About halfway through the book I was numb to the endless violence, near the end it began to hurt again.
It is a very distant story, and for huge chunks the protagonist is seemingly missing in the endless violence, only emerging as though you are viewing the story from far away. You get few insights into the humanity or inner thoughts of a single character and there is little dialogue, most of it taken up by the grand monologues of the Judge, the most hateful and wicked character ever written, a God of war and misery banqueting among. band of murderers.
If the issue was only violence, this would be an easy 4 stars for as it is uncomfortable and relentless, it is in it's own strange ways beautiful. The writing is genuinely compelling. However, violence is not the only issue. Offer me corpses endlessly sure, but what began to really wear me out outside of the violence was the unyielding cruelty given to women and minorities. There are few women in the book, and where there are they are unanimously degraded as whores and thrown away. The book is filled almost gleefully with slurs and the victims of the most awful murders are always Mexicans and Indigenous people. They seem to only exist in the book to die. It was honestly naseuating everytime I read a slur or had to read pages of Mexicans slaughtered and I do not know if the authors intent was to focus the cruelty on nonwhite bodies (though don't worry white people die too) but it is part of the DNA of the book that those the book endlessly regards as "savages" are only worthy of death. I do not know the author obviously, or the point he was trying to make, but it is impossible to ignore.
Overall, this is not a book I will forget, for good or bad. This is a ravenous book, a merciless book, a draining book, but in the world there is a place for it as well. I do not regret reading it but someone please recommend me the most whimiscal romance book ever written I need to cleanse.
It is a very distant story, and for huge chunks the protagonist is seemingly missing in the endless violence, only emerging as though you are viewing the story from far away. You get few insights into the humanity or inner thoughts of a single character and there is little dialogue, most of it taken up by the grand monologues of the Judge, the most hateful and wicked character ever written, a God of war and misery banqueting among. band of murderers.
If the issue was only violence, this would be an easy 4 stars for as it is uncomfortable and relentless, it is in it's own strange ways beautiful. The writing is genuinely compelling. However, violence is not the only issue. Offer me corpses endlessly sure, but what began to really wear me out outside of the violence was the unyielding cruelty given to women and minorities. There are few women in the book, and where there are they are unanimously degraded as whores and thrown away. The book is filled almost gleefully with slurs and the victims of the most awful murders are always Mexicans and Indigenous people. They seem to only exist in the book to die. It was honestly naseuating everytime I read a slur or had to read pages of Mexicans slaughtered and I do not know if the authors intent was to focus the cruelty on nonwhite bodies (though don't worry white people die too) but it is part of the DNA of the book that those the book endlessly regards as "savages" are only worthy of death. I do not know the author obviously, or the point he was trying to make, but it is impossible to ignore.
Overall, this is not a book I will forget, for good or bad. This is a ravenous book, a merciless book, a draining book, but in the world there is a place for it as well. I do not regret reading it but someone please recommend me the most whimiscal romance book ever written I need to cleanse.
challenging
dark
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Violence is the only thing this country does right
Not a genre I normally gravitate towards, picked it up from a recommendation. Ended up not being for me stylistically