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A review by huerca_armada
Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
4.0
Against a crushingly bleak, senselessly nihilistic world, a woman is struggling to find her lost child after he is abandoned to the elements by her brother. The same brother, in fleeing from the acts that he has committed, is dogged from place to place by guilt of his actions, and that which is foisted onto him. This is a disjointed world, where both the just and the guilty are cut down without mercy, and where the dregs of humanity are on full display.
Though set far away from the usual Southwestern haunts that the majority of McCarthy's other works have spanned, this portraiture of Appalachian gothic retains the same set pieces that feature so prominently in all of his writings. The lush, vivid descriptions of the countryside that is uncaring to the main characters and their struggles. The byzantine lexicon married with the sparse, coarse vocabulary of the people within. Ruminations on the human condition. And a set of villains who, even moreso than Blood Meridian's Judge Holden, will make your skin crawl with their every word.
One of his most harrowing books, arguably in contest with The Road from the novels that I've read for him so far. McCarthy's southern Gothic pulls no punches in the harshness exemplified in the genre. But for those who can stomach it, they will find it to be an integral work in McCarthy's catalogue.
Though set far away from the usual Southwestern haunts that the majority of McCarthy's other works have spanned, this portraiture of Appalachian gothic retains the same set pieces that feature so prominently in all of his writings. The lush, vivid descriptions of the countryside that is uncaring to the main characters and their struggles. The byzantine lexicon married with the sparse, coarse vocabulary of the people within. Ruminations on the human condition. And a set of villains who, even moreso than Blood Meridian's Judge Holden, will make your skin crawl with their every word.
One of his most harrowing books, arguably in contest with The Road from the novels that I've read for him so far. McCarthy's southern Gothic pulls no punches in the harshness exemplified in the genre. But for those who can stomach it, they will find it to be an integral work in McCarthy's catalogue.