Child of God - Cormac McCarthy

[bluetomb]

I have occasionally seen Child of God in lists of literary horror, of novels with monstrous protagonists, and simple novels that are "f***ed up", so it was always likely that one day we would meet. It is certainly literary horror, of sorts, it certainly has a monstrous protagonist, but "f***ed up"? Well, it probably isn't for your elderly maiden aunt, but it also won't likely trouble any seasoned pulp fans. Not that this is an issue really. For of an issue for me was that I wasn't entirely sure what it was all for. But I may be getting ahead of myself.

Child of God is the story of young Lester Ballard, Tennessee creep, loner and then some. Getting cast out from his land isn't a great start. Neither is what begins as humble voyeurism, spying on couples in parked cars, but by the by moves into necrophilia. An over-enthusiastically stoked fire (for defrosting purposes) leads to Lester's new lodgings and corpse mate in ashes, and that's when things really go south. Finding himself a cave complex and taking a proactive approach to sourcing bodies from now on, things are not likely to end well...

There is certainly some remarkable writing here. Passages including a hallucinatory dog pack, a real dog pack taking on a boar, Lester taking on a flooded river, and more, and the general depiction of a seeming perma-rain or snow sodden semi-mythical rural South and its denizens have a transporting power that is just as much wondrous as it is often grim. McCarthy can really write prose, and he also makes various viewpoint and tense switches, timeline lacunae and Lester's general unreliability credibly a sort of surreal patchwork in the way that myths really do exist, rather than just playing games. He's also pretty effortlessly gripping. I got through this in a contented two day binge.

What I wondered though was what it had to say. Granted, my milieu is far removed from rural Tennessee and I am not familiar with its history or legends and I have also not read the Bible in decades. There may be some significance here lost on me that is obvious to others. But to me it was chiefly an account of the horrible descent of a creep starved for real human connection. Which, notwithstanding McCarthy's literary talents and the themes I could pick up on like Lester as a part of the land he haunts and product of the people he menaces, McCarthy's avoidance of cod Freudian clichés, his restraint that keeps his violence on the eerie rather than schlocky side, all the seriousness the novel has going on, is basically the stuff of a thousand pure pulp horrors and seedy old proto-slasher pictures. A few years ago I would have been very much drawn by such material presented as serious literature, nowadays the literary side makes me wish there were more to the material. Perhaps there is, but I'm not so sure.

Still, there's a lot of interest and value here if literary horror is your thing. Plus it's sub 200 pages so it won't take up too much of your time. Recommended.