Child of God

The optimistic tint that I had hoped was somehow implied by the title of this book, which would make it an exception to the McCarthy rule, was pretty much not there. Pretty much. Instead, what I found was a story centered on illiterate Hill people, brain damaged hermits, LOTS of suffering, and the centerpiece, necrophilia. Sweet.

Woven into this narrative of suffering, and it's unique variant as experienced and created by the central character, are moments of prose, shining, like the sparkles that are thrown off by jagged shards of broken glass.

First let me say that I believe Cormac McCarthy is a master of the English language, and probably among the top writers of fiction of all time.
He is an artist of the highest caliber painting each sentence with the greatest precision.

The fact that this story is so dark is a great contrast to the beauty of the craftsmanship.

I highly recommend this book, and look forward to reading more of McCarthy 's creations.

I love the way McCarthy writes in the language of the time and location of the story. Each one takes a little adjusting, but it makes it engrossing. This story was full of his usual peering into the darkness of humanity.

Really good, really interesting. Like a lot of McCarthy's stuff there is some pretentiousness, but that's very minor complaint.

Dark, disturbing, and beautifully written. It's hard for an author to put a reader into the shoes of a what is otherwise one of the more seedy and detestable characters you'd ever care to read about. But McCarthy does just that and gives the reader both escape and a lot to think about.

Just a great book. Buy it!

Classic Cormac Mccarthy writing, but at the end of the book I still didn't feel like I cared about the main character - good or bad. I'd recommend this book for any fan of his writing style, but certainly not for the casual reader.

Don't get me wrong. I love Cormac McCarthy's work and think he is one of the great American writers. But, I am surprised this book was published in view of the horrific, repeated actions of its major player, a necrophiliac. I don't know nor do I want to know where the authors head was at when he wrote this book, but I hope I never go to that dark place. I was in law enforcement for 25 years so I am not easily shocked by the ugly side of man. That being said, I also don't want to read about someone involved in the worse level of depravation. Had an earlier reviewer hinted at the nature of the main character this book, I never would have bought it. I do not recommend "Child of God."

I found the writing compelling but the characters...not so much. The main character is a study in the debased human character that may lie dormant in most of us, but not so much that I can relate to anything he does nor to any thoughts he may have. So, I can only theoretically and academically relate to the main character. Whereas, "The Road" had me thinking for days.

Cormac McCarthy fuses Faulknerian dialog with the violence of Sade in this particularly gruesome and short novel. This novel's critical acclaim is probably nothing more than the combination of McCarthy's considerable technical skills and the shock value of the content. The 'protagonist' engages in violent rape, murder, and necrophilia in this repugnant piece of literary stylism. I could not put it down but I also could not help from thinking that it is ultimately a thin achievement.

Highly recommend this to any Cormac McCarthy fans or fans of pulp fiction. It's an emotional, often sad and tragic, frequently abhorrent story of country life in decades long past. McCarthy is a master of vivid imagery and delving into the caustic nature of humans. If you can't find the beauty in this novel.. you're doing it wrong.

This book is probably not for everyone. The story is very dark but then again it is Cormac McCarthy. The book is beautifully written.. Like other McCarthy books the words just flow off the page with amazing images. IMO, he is one of the best writers around.

One of the great writers of our time and one of his first books. I love this mans writing. Perhaps it has something to do with him assisting me with understanding who I am as a person as I read his books. "No...I am not Lester Ballard". Recently (although I have not seen it) turned to film.

This is my third McCarthy novel now including The Road and Blood Meridian. It is pretty short only coming in at about 200 pages, but I read it in one sitting. It's a disturbing novel that can be quite graphic, but it's expertly written as you might expect. A very good read.

This is the fifth or sixth McCarthy book I've read, and I like them all. Like most of his stories, this one is difficult to read, in terms of the subject matter, but his writing is terrific, and I look forward to more from him.

The chilling account of Lester Ballard, a child of God much like any other, but then also not at all. Following Lester’s descent into utter and complete apathy one is also constantly reminded of the humanity that once was. Finally Lester looks into a face much like his own as a child and his deviance comes to an abrupt and disorientating halt. As always one does not read Cormac McCarthy to feel good, but the truth of his works resonate into one's very deepest core.

hideousness described beautiful-blandly alternating with sick-rich lyricalities about the rank hillbilly highlands; there's a scene with a child and a sparrow that horrified me as nothing ever has before or since; a great book - dunno if the film is even going to come close to it

A very dark story reminiscent of Faulkner including some dark humor where you won't be able to keep yourself from laughing. McCarthy is at the top of his form with incredible prose and imagery. This is not my favorite novel he has ever written though it is very good.

Very intense moments! I love the language Mccarthy employs in his work. Rich, thought provoking, and absolute beautiful sense of the times and colloquialisms in his writing. Mccarthy is great at characterization, giving one true insight into his characters.

A masterpiece. Dark, incredibly layered and symbolic portrait of inhumanity, isolation, mental defect. The structure is the key to its effectiveness - and, as always, McCarthy's prose is absolutely phenomenal.

My first exposure to Cormac McCarthy was in my reading The Road...which I LOVED! In Child of God, McCarthy writes with the same rich, sophisticated prose, and has a way of making the debauched seem refined. However, in Child of God I was never able to connect with the character(s)...it's reading proved a purely intellectual exercise and emotional in no way.

Unmistakable McCarthy. Biblical in tone and sympathetic or non judgemental in approach to the character of Lester Ballard. The environment described clearly implicated in the terrible actions described.

Sick and twisted it is a story of a monster created by a town. Mary Shelley could be proud this is truly an allegory of her masterpiece Frankenstein the new Prometheus. A quick read and a must read for the fans of Cormac McCarthy.

I was surprised I didn't enjoy this book more, especially after reading other reviews. It was not all that violent. It was kind of boring, actually. I usually like Cormac Mccarthy's writing style but this one just felt flat to me.

Cormac McCarthy’s writing is always evocative, but his lack of understanding of women means that female characters are mere symbols or sign posts by which male characters mark their way. In his Pulitzer Prize winning, post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, that absence is justifiable, because the story centers on a young boy and his father; there are no other characters, just nameless monsters and their victims. But in Child of God, women are murdered left, right, and center, their bodies carefully defiled after death. This McCarthy describes with appalling detail. But a female character who seems real? Not a chance. The reader is left with images of women described by their physical, sexual attributes. Kind of disgusting that this form of masculine view writing is still winning literary accolades.

In general, I love Cormac McCarthy and am inured to his depressing topics and pessimistic outlooks on humanity. This book, on the other hand, was really difficult to read in terms of content. I felt like there was no "point" to it. It was short, that was a plus.

The narrator of this short novel describes the main character, Lester Ballard, as "a child of God much like yourself perhaps." A 27-year-old hillbilly outcast in 1960s, Sevier County (Smoky Mountains), Tennessee. He had no parents, recently lost his home and cannot carry on normal relationships with women. When he finds a couple dead in a parked car, he takes the woman with him to be his necro-concubine in a house in which he's squatting. When the house burns down, along with the woman's corpse, he goes out to harvest other women to meet his needs by shooting/killing them and taking their corpses to a cave in which he takes up residence.

The writing was good, covering themes of violent cruelty, sexual deviancy and moral degradation., but it's a difficult read because McCarthy experimented with various styles and didn't use quotation marks.

I cannot recommend this unless you feel compelled to read the entire McCarthy collection.

“Child of God” showcases early streaks of McCarthy’s signature qualities; bleak, bone-rattling lives of pitiful human beings speaking in folksy colloquialisms, set amongst natural surroundings often described with haunting lyricism. It’s interesting to find footprints of both “The Road” and “No Country for Old Men” in here.

And yet, perhaps understandably, it’s hard to find the later McCarthy’s deep symbolism and neo-Biblical fire and fury in “Child of God”. This lack of the master’s high art compounded with the fact that the main character in the book ends up being so depraved, pitiful and wretched so as to make us want to finish reading his life story quickly takes much of the McCarthy magic out of this novel. It almost feels like this is a draft, a way for McCarthy to flex his intellectual muscles in preparation for his later masterworks.

Gratuitous violence, soulless murderers, numbing poverty and bleak landscapes have always been part of McCarthy’s oeuvre. In “Child of God” all these elements combine in the life of a drifter with few friends and no family named Lester Ballard who, falsely accused of rape, starts living on the fringes of society. An outcast living in a cave, he starts committing increasingly depraved acts, ending in a macabre inferno of rampant necrophilia; first as a crime of opportunity and then one of passion.

It’s this filthy, lurid setting that makes one not just flinch from “Child of God” but question what the point is. In other McCarthy novels, even some of the extreme aspects of human nature were shrouded and somewhat softened by the beauty and symbolism in the narrative. There’s almost none of this here. It works reasonably well as a chronicle of a depraved monster’s life, but there is no pity, no inner insight, no redemptive appreciation of this grotesque sickness in human character left in the heart of the reader at the end.

You really enjoyed McCarthy’s The Road, No Country For Old Men and All The Pretty Horses for their compelling plot-lines and complex and human (and some inhuman) characters and because you were able to connect with someone or something in each. Maybe you even fought through and enjoyed Blood Meridian for its imagery and its severity. You consider yourself a McCarthy fan.

You decide to dig deeper into McCarthy’s catalogue and read some of his earlier works. You land on Child of God because it has a number of positive reviews and you reckon that a book that’s made into a movie must have something substantive going for it.

Then, after having read Child, you conclude that you liked it because it reeks of McCarthy and you love McCarthy. But you also decide that you don’t like it because you do not like, nor can you connect to, anyone in the story. And it’s not because you find the characters detestable (they are), or of a different culture and mind-set (they are), or because their lives are full of despair (they are), it’s because you find them flat, humorless and only moderately interesting.

Never once did you feel compelled to pull for Lester Ballard (COG’s Vice President of Nastiness), due in large part not being allowed to understand what drove him. And because the rest of the characters are relegated to back-story status, you’re left with nothing to hang on to – except the plot.

Unfortunately you find there is little in the way of plot. Misfortune(s) demand that Lester exist in a homeless state in the Appalachian woods. His wanderings lead him into a situation of opportunistic unpleasantness that then drives the rest of the story. Interesting thing is, the story unfolds as you might expect it to in real life. The rub is, sometimes real life is dull and uninspiring. Consequently your satisfaction meter rarely gets above the half-way mark.

You give the book 3 unenthusiastic stars and caution anyone that cares to listen that they should consider other McCarthy works if they are new to his world. Then you hit your favorite book source and order a copy of Outer Dark and anxiously await its arrival - even though it looks like it might look, smell and taste like COG.

Lastly you figure the movie might be mo betta than the book. You watch it only to find that, to its detriment, the movie mirrors the book almost to a T. Translation: flat characters and a purposeless plot line. Then to add icing to the cake, you discover the actor portraying Lester is almost unintelligible. You tell your friends the movie, like the book, is mostly bleh.

This is my third McCarthy book (Blood Meridian and The Road the other two) that I've read. Like his other works, Child of God is beautifully written with descriptive elements endemic to human nature at its lowest, basest, point. The main character, Lester Ballard, is a perfect example of a man who, with little description of his origins, lives on the fringes of society in the backwaters of Tennessee. Prone to certain proclivities, without empathy, and with little self-restraint, Ballard would likely be classified a psychopath in today's society. In this story, the reader accompanies the misanthropic Ballard as he goes about his activities of daily living, most of it mundane, and some of it shocking. McCarthy with his characteristic brevity has written another classic.

My personal history with the work of Cormac McCarthy is limited and rather unbalanced. I have friends who praise his name up one way and down the other, though I had, until recently, never really understood the hype surrounding him. I read The Road several years back and did not care for it. I felt it was fairly straightforward as stories go and altogether less than fantastic. I watched the 2013 film The Counselor which he penned specifically for the screen and thought that while the movie was executed well from a filmmaking standpoint, it was a pointlessly bleak story and not a film worth revisiting.

On the other hand, I do very much enjoy the Coen’s adaptation of No Country for Old Men, though that is hardly the same thing as reading the novel so I can’t speak much to the story in its original form. More recently, I read McCarthy’s short novel Child of God, published in 1973, and finally caught a glimpse of that greatness of which my friends so fervently speak.

Child of God is a brutal novel, appealing to my love for gritty Southern literature, but it is also beautiful and eloquent with many rich descriptive passages and profound lines of dialogue. McCarthy’s tone in this book is like a pitch-perfect blending of Faulkner’s observant, human-centric prose and the depraved sinful conduct and bloodshed performed by the characters of Donald Ray Pollock or Daniel Woodrell.

There were numerous moments that were exceptionally hard to stomach while reading, though not because the violence was described gratuitously or at length, but simply for the nature of the violence (or sexual act) itself. The central character is utterly despicable, deranged beyond measure, and wholly impossible to admire in any fashion, yet somehow he is completely fascinating in a way that fills the reader with a sort of dumbstruck terror and holds their attention for almost 200 pages (at least, it held mine). Reading Child of God is like glimpsing a horrifying slice of reality we had never dreamt was possible but one that could very well exist in a not-so-distant corner of our own country.

McCarthy makes the minimalistic approach work to his advantage (a style that is challenging to do well), both in the forming of his characters and in the building of the novel’s environment. The lack of specific detail about a character’s appearance or mannerisms allows the reader to formulate a sense of the person that comes almost exclusively from the way they speak or the actions they carry out (Steinbeck had a similar way of forming characters through dialogue). That said, McCarthy is able to be very descriptive when he wants to be and when the moment suits it, crafting lengthy and carefully-worded sentences that have to be read more than once to be fully appreciated for their scope (for example, the sentence that opens the novel).

The argument could be made as to “what’s the point?” of a novel like this in which a deplorable person does monstrous things to others and more or less gets away with it, enduring only meager repercussions to the end of his life. This is the sort of book that will rub certain people the wrong way, or which others will simply not “get.” I can’t say that I understand the point of the novel perfectly either (and am not suggesting that it needs to have one), but that, like so many things, it was quite an experience to walk through and I was ultimately glad to have read it, though “glad” is probably not quite the correct word. I came out the other end having had something small and subtle confirmed in my mind regarding the nature of man and his tendency towards wickedness.

It's a bit disarming reading about a town as you sit in the middle of it. The old hospital is quite literally a stone's throw away. The language is true, the descriptions are pure, but this novel is disgusting to get through. I'm relieved it's over. But now I have to read all his others set here in my part of Tennessee. I guess if you've got a strong stomach, read this one. I can't say it wasn't fascinating.

I am in the process of reading all of Cormac McCarthy's books! It has taken me into places I never planned or wanted to go. I am awed at the McCarthy talent. His story telling genius shines through every page, and his writing is superb. As I try to review this book the word ghoulish comes to mind. Lester Ballard is a homeless mountain man who is mad. His hard living and failures have driven him into a maladjusted and dangerous state. The process has been slow and the reader is witness to Lester's falterings steps into madness. We see a harmless aggravating town character grow into a monster.
The area written about in this book is my stamping ground. I know the area well and many of the locales I can visualize. This book is easier to read than other of McCarthy's work. "The Crossing" was a more difficult book. It was a long, ambitious and brilliant work. "Child of God" is relatively easy to read, it is straight forward and moves rather quickly. There is a lot to digest even before we got into the story . The early chapters set the stage and McCarthy has the dialect and the feel of the area perfectly.

This is a HORRIBLE STORY! I mean that in the sense of the depravity on so many levels in it!

Lester Ballard is a psychopath who lives in the Tennessee mountains. He's lives as a recluse but, with severe societal problems. Through some of his childhood memories, you can see that he was raised in a bad situation and really never got over it. He seems "stunted" through his early years, but also damaged from the same. But he's simply a loonie as and adult! He has been shunned by the townsfolk treated as a complete outcast. He has violent tendencies which doesn't help matters with the people in the community. He even loses it further at the sale of his father's farm. It's the catalyst that sends him over the edge of reality. He lives off grid, survives by the land. But he's lonely, oh so lonely. He talks to himself and snoops at "normal" people's doings. He wants revenge for the "stealing" of his childhood home/Fathers farm. He just doesn't fit in... anywhere! He is a sick, sick man! He finally takes his depraved nature into a whole new level of the worst of humanity! There's murder and necrophilia! The sickest things happen in this character's mind and actions that are so very disturbing, unimaginable, incomprehensible to normal people, and he thinks it's perfectly Okay to do so! There's a lot to be said about mental illness and yet a smart & cunning man at the same time. You journey through this horror with the character's so much so, you almost feel like you're a voyeur, standing in the scenery, breathing in the air, feeling the brush, trees, foliage. Your dropped in so much so, that it's as if you can touch everything, yet not be able to do a thing about it! It's very engrossing, dark, creepy, sadistic. You want to reach out, warn, and save those who fall into Lester's grasp. The madman, driven further into the depth's of his demented mind, at times even has a layer to him that you feel sort of sorry for him. It's as if, MAYBE, just MAYBE if he wasn't so shunned and pushed into the isolation so deeply, that he may not have ended up being who he became, and doing what he did. By far it was VERY DISTURBING! So, anyone who is sensitive to highly charged, violent, disgusting, bout's of rape, rage, terror, necrophilia in graphic detail, this might be a pass on for you.

This was written in the usual great style from Cormac McCarthy. It's a Horrible tale, yes, but a great story that dives into the worst of humans nature. And that isn't just Lester's character that shows it. A great read! But be warned of the creepy and disturbing darkness of it. Once you start it, you WILL dive in and devour it, BECAUSE it's written so well! I assure you that once you finish it, you will not keep it on your shelf to go read again. The reading of this book in a true reading fashion, not jumping around or speed reading it, will give you ALL you need, and frankly never want to revisit again!

I began this book one Sunday afternoon and finished it later that night. I would say that this book is not for everyone due to the portrayal of necrophelia. Short chapters, great prose (the local language, setting, descriptions etc.) and pacing. I simply kept wanting to read. What next? The subject matter is quite sad. The 27 yr old Lester Ballard of Sevier Co., Tennessee has lost everything in his life. His mother ran away, his father hung himself, the county auctioned off his property, the house he is squatting in burns to the ground. His bootlegger cannot even remember where he hid his "shine. Lester ends up in the dead of winter living in a cave. Lester is alone in the world, he cannot relate normally to other humans. The isolation drives him mad. He lives alone with stuffed animals and dead bodies. He prowls the countryside. When he comes to town for supplies he seems unable to have a normal conversation with anyone. (The chapter with the blacksmith is when you know Lester is simply in another world.) The law has it in for him. He's tagged as a troublemaker. However, he does seem to be able to communicate with some of the hill people who are also rather isolated. Perhaps all his problems began to accelerate with a severe blow to the head. (McCarthy implies same.) This book was written more than 40 yrs ago and it remains a powerful statement. It is my understanding that the actor/director James Franco made a movie out of the book. Anyway, I much enjoyed this "horrible" little book. If you like this book I would also recommend The Orchard Keeper, one of McCarthy's first books which is also set in Tennessee.

There is no doubt that McCarthy can write, and write incredibly well. However, for me, this story was just too dark and too cruel. I was glad it was short, was glad to be done with it. Yes, I know that darkness is a hallmark of McCarthy, but I can still love some of his writing, especially The Road.

Ballard was not a nice man even before he lost his home and began living in the woods, but he devolved into a complete animal -well, not true; that doesn't give enough credit to animals. His predilections became perverse and painful to read, but still, there was for me, a disconnect with his victims. The cruelty in the book was overwhelming, and there were some very disturbing animal cruelty scenes as well.

The ending was something of a letdown. It felt hurried and anticlimactic. But then again, I was just glad the book was done.

I listened to an unabridged audio version, and the narrator was excellent.

Cormac McCarthy is a master craftsman of putting words together. His prose is lyrical and poetic; he does a brilliant job of painting a picture of a scene and creating an atmosphere around it. Having said that, I didn't feel that Child of God was a totally satisfying read. While I was a big fan of The Road and still think back on it many years after reading, this earlier work of McCarthy's lacks a truly coherent story. The story is fairly basic but it so choppy that I found it hard to follow - like an amazingly shot film that is edited by a hack. Maybe that's a bit strong, but with his lack of quotations and his confusing use of what seemed to me, multiple narrators, coupled with a jumpy narrative, I had trouble keeping pace with his indulgent style. It took me most of the book to even understand who all of the characters were. And even then, there were some loose ends as I saw it.

The story is dark and if you like dark, maybe you will love this story. I DO like dark, but this was even a bit grim for my tastes. It's a fast read and a book that will keep you interested, but ultimately, I found it to be as somewhat incoherent as the main character's motivations.

Poor old Cormac. He read Faulkner and saw where Faulkner won the Nobel Prize. He said, I can do that. So he wrote Outer Dark which his version of Light in August.(Woman traipsing around the country trying to find somebody) Then he wrote Child of God which is his version of As I Lay Dying.(Use of pronouns and stream of consciousness to keep the reader confused) But a funny thing happened on the way to the Nobel Prize. He ain't got one. Now, don't git me wrong. I ain't sayin Cormac can't write. He writes damn good. But I am sayin that he ain't original. A copy of Faulkner ain't Faulkner.

Eddy Arnold

One of the author's earlier efforts, this is a quick read that delivers chilling significance as each short chapter unfolds. The protagonist is a true anti-hero with little in the way of redeeming qualities. If anything, one admires his pluck and determination to survive in the face of all the wrong he is destined to do. The author avoids the pitfall of an unreliable narrator by interspersing narrative chapters with reminiscences of unnamed peripheral characters who flesh out Ballard and his distasteful history. The author displays his mastery at crafting characters disposessed and abandoned by society. This unloveable character is meant to meet his fate and we are there only to bear mute witness. A great character study, a lesson in restraint. Highly recommended for light weekend reading.

This book is hard to review. It is like nothing I have ever read by McCarthy. This is one of his first works and he has changed and grown so very much since.
This small book is about a back hills, non-educated, violent, awkward man named Lester Ballad. It tells the story of his existence in Tennessee after being released from jail, in one day instances and scenes. There is a lot of vulgarity, sex and killing in this novel. The end of the story is summed up very well to make sure that you understood the heinous crimes that were taking place.
Not a book that I would recommend to others, however I am glad that I read it because it shows McCarthy's distinct prose, character development, high imagination and the welcomed progression of McCarthy's writing ability.

With CHILD OF GOD, Cormac McCarthy takes the repugnant character of Lester Ballard -serial-murderer, necrophiliac, madman- and fleshes him into a living, breathing nightmare. A nightmare w/ motivations that ring true in an insane way. Though Lester's actions are incomprehensible, we sense the deep engine within him, driving him on through his descent. McCarthy holds nothing back, making the unthinkable / unspeakable come alive in a vibrant, concise narrative. In the end, we don't exactly feel sorry for Ballard, but we do see him as a mentally destroyed specimen of humanity, rather than a two-dimensional monster. McCarthy never ceases to surprise me w/ his style or his artfulness. This book works whether you are looking for a -VERY- macabre tale, or simply love great literature. Highly recommended...

McCarthy manages to chain you in the middle of hell (eastern Appalachian Tennessee) and leaves you there until you close the book. The problem is the captivation of your environment, which makes you continually scan the smells, sounds and macabre imagination that is induced.
McCarthy has dark places in his mind. Few men would admit same, even fewer would commit them to paper. I guess we all could visualize and elucidate the horrors that can be man, but thankfully few write it well enough to publish same. I warn you that Child of God is brutish, repulsive and lyrical. A true oxymoronic journey to the desperation of the insane.

For those that can not get past this fact, the main character in this novella is a necrophiliac. Most readers will not purchase this book because they really want to read up on this type of behavior. Other readers will be disturbed and appalled. This book is written by Cormac McCarthy, so a fairy tale ending should be out of the question. The reader should expect his or her mind to be challenged by thought-provoking writing.

Titling a book "Child of God" may seem incredibly out of place based on certain traits exhibited by the main character. Lester Ballard is an outcast, shunned by most in the hills of East Tennesse even from the first page of the book. His existance is lonely and bizarre. The title of the novel actually brings the story full circle. Lester Ballard is a "Child of God" in the same way as everybody else in the story. But being forced to live on the fringes of society, Ballard adopts some unacceptable habits. From a trip of the store to acts of voyeurism, Cormac McCarthy lends a sense of diginity to the most sordid and vile acts. In itself, this is not an easy task.

"Child of God" is a well paced and thought-provoking story. It goes without saying that this novella is not for everybody. Even while Lester Ballard is at his most depraved, the reader can not help feeling some sense of connection. For the author to do this with such a main character speaks volumes for this work.

The book is nasty, brutish and short. Everything Thomas Hobbes could want to show what life in a state of nature would be like. The main character - Lester Ballard - gets my vote for being the most despicable characterization of a human being imaginable; yet, in some way, McCarthy seems to want, at some level, to create some sense of sympathy for Ballard.

Living in the wooded mountains of Tennessee, Ballard is deprived of his property, forced to live in the wild, and goes on an extensive, disturbing crime spree - much of which is unflinchingly repulsive.

McCarthy's works tend to be blunt, uncompromising (and frequently unsympathetic) looks at humanity - the sort of stuff one doesn't want to acknowledge - that hit too close to home to be comfortable. He has an eye for precision in his narration that is stark, uneasy, yet - in its own way - quite beautiful.

This may not be a book for everyone, as some parts approach the absolutely disgusting. But if you want to experience real American literature as few other authors dare present it, Child of God may be a masterpiece.

This is a beautifully written book with a terribly disturbing plot. Set in the rural south, Lester Ballard is a mentally unstable man who is pushed over the edge when falsely accused of rape. When he’s let out of jail less than a week later, Ballard goes on a spree so unsettling it’ll make you nauseous.

This is not a warm feel good book, but the writing is top shelf, which is why it gets 4 stars from me.

To call Letser Ballard an outcast or a loner would not even come close to properly describing him. He is someone totally at odds with society and his fellow man. He lives alone, uses others' property for his own needs and shows little concern for the emotional needs of others. And that is the good side. The darker side is his taste in what companions he does decide to have and how he goes about getting them. CHILD OF GOD is at once an easy read due to McCarthy's writing style yet a difficult read based on the subject matter. At times, one can barely believe the words one reads on the page.

Yet underneath the horror of Lester Ballard's life are some signs of something more. McCarthy refers to him as a child of God early in the novel and, lest we do not get the picture, adds that Ballard is such a child of God just like the rest of us. McCarthy often imbues his writings with religiosity and wants us to know that, despite the extreme differences in behavior between Ballard and the reader, God's grace is present in us all. Indeed, if Lester Ballard is a child of God, then God's love must truly be universal.

That McCarthy portrays Ballard so simplistically adds to this. We know Ballard is in his upper 20s. But besides that, we know very little of him. This universalizes Ballard in a way that makes it more difficult to portray him as the "Other" rather than as a general metaphor for humanity. His status as an outcast can be read as symbolic that we are all outcasts from God unless and until we willingly receive his grace. Ballard's close personal association with death reinforces the notion that the ideas interwoven into this novel are not concerned merely, or even primarily, with this world.

McCarthy is an excellent writer whose style is probably more accessible than that of other authors in his league. That has the benefit of allowing readers to explore the ideas he presents without struggling too hard with, or being bored by, the actual text. McCarthy has a reputation as being a writer who explores dark areas of humanity. Certainly CHILD OF GOD can be described that way. It may not always be a pleasant read, but it is a recommended one.

This is one of McCarthy's older novels but the major themes of his later work are all present: violence, lust, crime, law, the role of the outcast, the indifference of the cosmos ((and of God, if you will)), and, throbbing beneath it all, the great heart of darkness that keeps it all alive.

In spare, poetic language, McCarthy tells an equally spare and poetic story about the life of a man who is quite literally a human monster--and all-too-human monster at that. And therein lies the "poetry." *Child of God* can be read as a literary gothic horror novel and indeed it contains elements of the horror genre from Frankenstein to Psycho to Silence of the Lambs to Saw. *Child of God* and the character of Lester Ballard may ultimately be more terrifying than any of them, however, inasmuch as McCarthy tempts us to do the most dangerous thing of all: sympathize with the 'monster' and the 'monstrous.'

In brief chapters, McCarthy builds this gruesome story scene by scene like someone constructing a gallows. There are nature descriptions of breathtaking beauty. Episodes of harrowing action and viscerally shocking perversion. Candid `interviews' with the hicks, hillbillies, and good ole boys remembering Lester Ballard from way back when that'll have you laughing out loud. McCarthy hits all the notes in this short symphony of what is not so much an illustration of the `banality of human evil' as it is the absurdity of human evil.

As realistic as an axe blade, and as disturbing as finding blood and human hair on that axe blade, *Child of God* is a horror novel in the most absolute and artistic sense...a masterpiece that lays bare the "horror" at the heart of human nature.

Holy necromancing!
Mr. McCarthy can write with such a sweet prose about some of the vilest subjects. This story is odd and dark. I'm just a bit concerned for the author's psyche. However, his writing is so good. I find myself wrapped in the story going deep as a spelunker.
5 stars for writing minus 1 star for creepiness.

Cormac McCarthy has succeeded on writing a novel about the birth and life of a psychotic killer which does not preach or talk down to the reader. Lester Ballad is a social outcast in a rural sin-laden town who sinks deeper and deeper into depravity as he is further and further isolated from humanity. He becomes more violent and depraved as the novel progresses. The author does not offer much insight into Lester's mind as to why he does some of the things he does. But what makes this novel succeed is that it is up to the reader to piece together the events to paint the picture of why Lester is the way he is and why he becomes more depraved as he progresses through the story. One could read a moral to the story but then I am not sure that the author ever intended for us to look for a moral. If there is one message then it is borne out in the title of the book - Lester like everyone else is after all a Child of God. This book is a fast read, easily read in an evening and once started, cannot be put down until the end. The author uses wonderful, poetic prose and at times I was awed by his ability to convey such vivid images in such a short book. Like so many of the author's books it is a violent and earthy book but nothing out of character with the story.

This is truly a horrifying novel. The subject matter of a crazed killer is not something that I would normally be drawn to, but quite honestly was drawn by the title although I knew this wasn't going to be a walk in the park having read "Road" and "No Country for Old Men." For me, this was the best.

The writing in this book is so gripping. McCarty paints a terrifying picture of Ballard yet without preaching, moralizing, or sympathizing, the reader gets a tiny glimpse of an understanding of what allienation and isolation can cause in an individual and in a society. The scene of Ballard bringing the wounded bird to the pitiful child and the child's reaction is one of the most gripping I have ever read.[The situation was reminiscent of a situation in "Gilead" by Marianne Robinson[[ASIN:031242440X Gilead: A Novel] Likewise, the description of Ballard watching "the diminutive progress of all things in the valley, the gray fields coming up black...Squatting there he let his head drop between his knees and he began to cry." It takes a very skilled writer to believably bring out that thread of humanity in such a deprived character.

This is not a pretty book and certainly not a pleasant read, but one that needs to be read by anyone who questions who is really a child of God.

I read this novel on an airplane flight. I found it impossible to put down. The subject matter is gruesome yet when I finished the book during the same flight I said to myself, this book is beautiful. I asked the question: how can an author write a story that is beautiful about a subject matter that is horrific. That is the genius of Cormac McCarthy. The imagery is pure McCarthy and as good as it gets. The dialogue is terse but relevant. The progression of Lester Ballard from a man unjustly accused to a profoundly disturbed misfit and necrophiliac is gripping. When I tried to explain the plot to someone else, I found it nearly impossible to do and still preserve the beauty of the story. This is a pretty good place to introduce yourself to Cormac McCarthy. The story is beautifully written but not as long and complex as Blood Meridian or Suttree so it is easier to follow. I recommend this book to anyone, but don't forget to fasten your seat belt.

I'm a huge fan of McCarthy, and Child of God doesn't disappoint. That being said, it's one of my least favorite of McCarthy's works. McCarthy has always been a master of keeping you at a distance from his protagonists, letting you love or hate him as the story unfolds and you begin to see into the depths of the character's soul. But there's not much to Lester Ballard. He's more despicable and pathetic than hateful. And while a character of such severe deprivations blends perfectly with McCarthy's prose, I felt like I couldn't always get a feel on Ballard's true self. On one hand, he seemed like an angry, violent redneck, and on the other, a Buffalo Bill type of character. At times I pitied him, and at others, I just didn't care. And despite not caring about what happens to him, I couldn't put the book down. Only McCarthy can make such a pathetic man so interesting.

Pathetic as he was, I was still left shaking at some of Ballard's actions. He was ruthless, lacked empathy, and he was selfish to a frightening degree. The action, when it came, would bite you like a snake in the dark. Ballard, through his violence, his deprivations, and his destruction, will leave you wondering about your own life, and your own place in the world.

'Each leaf that brushed his face deepened his sadness and dread. Each leaf he passed he'd never pass again. They rode over his face like veils, already some yellow, their veins like slender bones where the sun shone through them.'

Lester Ballard is a man born into hardship and is seemingly cursed with tragedy. His mother leaves him and his father when he was young and he is the first to find his father's body hanging from the rafters when he is just ten years old forcing him to seek help from the townsfolk to get his body down. This requires a quick advancement in maturity considering he's all by himself and there's no one left to care for him and the small town he resides in has no intention of doing him any favors.

Lester being made an outcast in his own community is one of the major themes of the novel. He's constantly rejected by everyone for being strange and different yet he never fails to continue trying to find his place in the town. Their rejection and judgment becomes borderline cruel when he isn't even accepted within the walls of the church. In addition to the desire for a place in the community, what he desires more is a connection with a woman and he receives nothing but disgust from the female gender. This ongoing rejection can easily be blamed for the reason he took the path he did because he grew up isolated and lacks any sort of moral compass or understanding of right and wrong. His first crime occurs when he stumbles upon the car of a man and a woman who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the midst of having sex. He decides to not only have sex with the woman but he takes her body back to his house. While it's easy to be immediately repulsed, it's actually quite rueful if you consider that this was the first woman he encountered in his life that didn't immediately run from him in disgust. It's deplorable, yes, but it's also pitiable.

What's most impressive is the fact that McCarthy is able to portray Lester as a morally perplexed human being rather than the quick to judge "psychopath" description that is equally fitting. It's surprisingly difficult not to feel as least a modicum of pity for the man who was left to raise himself at the age of ten, was later tossed out of his own house and left with no where else to go and forced to live in an abandoned house that just barely protects him from the elements. While this obviously doesn't excuse him from his horrible crimes (I don't believe that was ever McCarthy's intention anyways) it does depict him as an actual person, a child of God, and not a monster and that's quite possibly even scarier.

McCarthy abandons literary standards by flipping between different writing styles seemingly at random and fails to utilize quotation marks which never fails to infuriate me. Trying to decipher who is talking and when they're actually talking and not just thinking... that should never be an issue. The various use of prose strewn throughout the novel was definitely a break from the truly ugly story this was and was most welcome.

This book came under fire when a teacher in Tuscola, Illinois asked his Freshman aged pre-Advanced Placement students to choose the book they wish to read for a book report. The parents of a young girl were so offended by the material that the teacher provided their 14 year-old child that they filed an official complaint with the sheriff's office. From what I can find, no charges stuck with the teacher but this is still appalling. While I can agree this book covers material that may not be suitable for a 14 year old (The main character kills several people and rapes the corpses of women. Another character rapes his daughter.) however I think in this case monitoring of reading material should be handled by the parents. They could have easily had their child pick another book from the list. Charges against the teacher? That's ludicrous. In addition to that, the banning of this book (or any book) only limits how a person is informed and prevents sheltering an individual from the harsh realities of the world. This story is inspired by actual events in Sevier County, Tennessee so while I don't believe it's the best book for a young person, I do not believe it should be banned because I'd rather have a child that's informed and aware about the world rather than one that walks this Earth oblivious.

This is another deeply powerful and beautiful McCarthy read. I recommend it absolutely.

Synopsis: in late 1950s/early 1960s rural eastern Tennessee, dispossessed and destitute Lester Ballard, his "eyes dark and huge and vacant," "a crazed mountain troll...," does his best to survive as an outcast, sliding deeper and deeper into degradation and a fantasy world of his own making.

This is an early McCarthy work, his third novel, published in 1973. The content is highly original and unique, a novel where the protagonist, for want of a better term, is repulsive. I was reminded quickly enough of John Gardner's Grendel, but this isn't a monster's tale and his observations of the changing world around him. Lester is not a monster. The book is a fast read at only 197 pages, and while packing some vocab challenges such as "virid," "haruspices," "slaverous," "wimpling" and others, it's not nearly as dense as Suttree,Blood Meridian and The Border Trilogy.

My main question is: why would the brilliant poet tell us the story of an illiterate, destitute, homeless, serial-murdering necrophile?

This is not a writing exercise in taking the monstrous and despicable and slowly turning the reader from revulsion to sympathy; McCarthy's prose is more about observation than judgment. He simply tells us what Lester Ballard does, and we are left to ponder the motivation, if there truly is any, conscious or sub-.

I see it as McCarthy telling it all in the title: if you believe in god, then Lester is here on purpose, placed in and among us for a reason, according to the divine master plan. It follows directly, then, that Lester and his actions are god's will. So what exactly is god's intent with Lester and his abhorrent actions? What purpose does it serve? The murdered innocents, what is the meaning of their loss? Sacrifice? Or, does Lester and the presence of the aberrant serve to skewer the notion that god is up there and that all things at all times happen to on deliberate and divine course? If you sign up for the basic religious notion that we are all children of god, then it's undeniable: Lester is here for a reason. Does Lester reflect god's own capricious violence? Or is it a much more stark truth: in the lottery of life where you pop into existence is pure happenstance, and some get the gold and some get the muck, and this is Lester's sorry lot, his tragic role to play.

Lester's purpose is legend, the lurid, abnormal thing of wonder, beyond the pale, grotesque and fascinating: "You could say that he's sustained by his fellow men, like you," says McCarthy, directly to the reader. His own people did this to Lester, we "...a race that gives suck to the maimed and the crazed, that wants their wrong blood in its history and will have it..." Just like Yossarian's squadronmates sneaking to the bushes at the beach to look at the moldering remains of Kid Sampson. The grotesque is lurid and enticing, and we are all fascinated by it, the exhilarating proximity to violence, violation and death.

Lester is not evil, McCarthy stating flatly "...no demon," and it's clear Lester knows what he is doing and has done is wrong. There is no torture, no reveling in the violence on Lester's part or in McCarthy's writing; it simply is a necessary step in Lester's journey. At times it seems Lester feels entitled, that all else has been taken from him, so he is free to take as well, as horrific and unequal as it is. McCarthy stresses it plainly; it's rage that drives him. Everything has been taken from him, no one giving back in the least, so he is simply returning the favor. He has been driven out, and is making his way the best he knows, with no help. His tenacity in all things is a reflection of his simple dedication to his intentions, not some evil, super-human effort; Lester just doesn't know any better. Lester cries, but it's up to the reader to determine its origin.

McCarthy's descriptions of all of Lester's actions, murder and then some, are direct and matter-of-fact, paired with lyrical, loving descriptions of the magnificent environments he inhabits and traverses. McCarthy lingers--as he did so magnificently in Suttree--on highly detailed and poetic descriptions of the natural surroundings, frost on the vegetation, the wonder and majesty of a swollen river (he was working on Suttree at the time), the simple beauty of snow and rain in the forest, rocks, the majesty of the rise of the mountains, the movement of smoke in a damp cave, and so much more.

I see pre-echoes of Suttree, a man alone, with the retreat into madness when Suttree fled into the mountains, with Lester's actual descent into a sub-human state.

The terminology is unflinching in conversation, with racist terms and vulgarity, but fully in keeping with the characters and their time.

And McCarthy's beautiful writing, his respect for and wonder of the world in such lovely detail:
* Describing a bounding log in a flooded creek: "...it came on bobbing and bearing in its perimeter a meniscus of pale brown froth in which floated walnuts, twigs, a slender bottle neck erect and tilting like a metronome."
* "...rags of snow in the yard lay gray and lacy..."

Bottom line: this is a beautiful book observing tragic and disturbing circumstances. It mixes violence and revolting acts with loving and artful descriptions of the wonder of nature around us. It is a fascinating study of what humans do to one another, and in doing so questions what many of us choose to believe in.

Saying that "Child of God" is about good and evil may sound a bit pretentious. Indeed, this tale of Lester Ballard, an outcast from society, doesn't seem too high-handed at first. It initially comes off as a gritty, honest portrayal of a man driven to murder and necrophilia. It's a bit hard to read, both due to imagery and language; readers will wince at the horrible scenes as much as the complicated dialogue and phrasing.

But that's just Cormac McCarthy for you; his grasp on the English language is unparalleled in today's literary circles, and at times is daunting, a puzzle that must be unravelled. Therein lies half the fun. The other half is putting the novel down and thinking about what you've read. "Child of God" makes us question our own humanity; like McCarthy's more recent "The Road," or any other of his novels, it makes you wonder what you yourself are capable of doing, if driven to your outermost limits. Is this an easy read? No, not hardly. But is it a worthwhile read? Oh, most definitely. Cormac McCarthy is one of the few fiction writers today who genuinely has something to say, and who won't beat you over the head with it; he'll say his piece, then leave it up to you to figure it out. That's one of the things that makes great literature so great.

"Child of God" is a story of a poor, lonesome and demented redneck named Lester trying to survive in a poor redneck town. From the beginning we see that he has gotten the boot from society (be it as it may) and has been forgotten and left on his own to survive and pursue his own interests, which are very sick and wrong. But he doesn't seem to realize he is doing anything wrong. I am not going to go into it but the thing is, as he hides from his pursuers living in caves, I root for him! I almost like him and find myself snickering at his horrific behavior!! What is wrong with me?

I think this is a good story. It contains a lot of contrasts, the actual plot is dark and there is evil and violence and desperation, but at the same time, there is humor and a little lightness and some action. If you like Cormac McCarthy you should read this book. It's a weird one but it keeps your interest and stengthens your grasp of Cormac's dark and desperate edge-of-humanity with maybe-a-smirk landscapes.

Cormac McCarthy's Child of God, lacks the strange lush language of much of his other work. McCarthy takes things like syntax and write-ly diction and pulls them through an extruder that is uniquely his own. What comes out on the other end is a kind of language that is both regional and strangely universal; tied to a place and time, but also free from those moorings, existing in some other realm that we can only call artistic inspiration.

Child of God forgoes that element, and is more concerned with plot and outcome. The result is a novel less richly textured than many of his works, as well as a more traditional plot outline. Even so, the plot has an odd feeling of laxity; as if McCarthy didn't quite have it into him to follow all the lines he had created in laying out the story.

Part might be the inherent violence in the tale. Maybe this is his first attempt to take American Violence and place in front and center. In the process, McCarthy let other elements slide. We get a novel that has an appeal, but only voyeuristically. We want to know what will happen in the story, but for all the wrong reasons.

This novel is for a fan of McCarthy who wants to see how he is honing themes that he will master in other novels, later in his career (Blood Meridian, The Road, No Country For Old Men). Read Children of God as a primer of what will come later, and come strong.

I read McCarthy's "Blood Meridian", loved it and decided to check out some of his other works. So I picked this up with huge expectations. In the end, I was not disappointed. Now, on with the review:
McCarthy seems to have taken bits of the life of Wisconsin killer, Ed Gein, combined them with bit of local (Tennessee) legend and created a very entertaining (albeit twisted) tale.
While this work is a little rough-around-the-edges (after about 30 pages that becomes part of its charm), it moves at a very lively pace, and is packed with some of the most disturbing (often done in an oddly humorous way) scenes ever put down on paper.
McCarthy has a great sense for rural America. Not that cute, Lake Wobegonish ruralism. This is closer to Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood". It may not be politically correct but Hillbillies are creepy and Lester Ballard, the novel's protagonist, is the creepiest Hillbilly.
The great thing about Lester is that he isn't blatantly good or evil, he's just lives from day-to-day not unlike an animal. Animals need to eat, sleep, and mate. Lester eats what he can shoot, sleeps in a shack on an old mattress and mates...well, that's were Lester's problems really manifest themselves. Let's just say that to every problem, there's a solution.
My only complaint is that a promising narrative device (using the locals to fill in Lester's past) is dropped early in the book. The final chapters (and, believe me, they are priceless) more than make up for this flaw.
So, if you're still wondering rather this book is worth purchasing, let me just quote Lester Ballard and say "Any time you get to feelin' froggy - jump."

CHILD OF GOD by Cormac McCarthy

When Cormac McCarthy writes, not only does he produce works of literature that entertain the mind, heart and soul of the reader, but he produces for us mere mortals works of such articulate expositions of the human condition that we are left in a state of joyful bewilderment. We read journeys of the human sentience-ness which plum the depths of depravity or ones that rise up ,up, up into the heavens to soar like an eagle caught up in the breath of God.

The trouble with McCarthy's works is that you pick them up and it is not until you are past the halfway mark that you realise that you are reading something that is not meant for the common man. By then, of course, it is too late to stop and put the darn thing down so you go on reading page by page, guiltily and silently turning over and casting your eyes across the next one, not quite believing what you are seeing. Sometimes you find yourself with a smirk on your face, or you emit a snort of derision but most times you are forced to wipe a tear or two away from your eyes as they cope with the beauty of the printed page beneath them. CHILD OF GOD is like this. For example, taken from 126 - 127:

"... He followed this course for perhaps a mile down all its turnings and through narrows that fetched him sideways advancing like a fencer and through a tunnel that brought him to his belly, the smell of the water beside him in the trough rich wi minerals and past the chalken dung of he knew not what animals until he climbed up a chimney to a corridor above the stream and entered into a tall and bell shaped cavern. Here the walls with their soft looking convolutions, slavered over as Pitney were wet with blood red mud, had an organic feel to them, like the innards of some great beast. Here in the bowels of the mountain Ballard turned on his light on ledges or pallets of stone where dead people lay like saints."

What a fantastic way to end a chapter! Anyway, the book is about a crazy mixed up son of a gun named Lester Ballard. As the story progresses we witness his transformation from unpopular loner into a seriously deranged and dangerous serial killer who obviously has no idea about social or ethical / moral boundaries. Toward the end I kept thinking that Ballard is a modern day version of Tolkien's Gollum, always heading back to the safety and darkness of his underground cavern. The only difference I could see was that Ballard was not eternally questing for his 'preciousssss' but instead I felt that he was searching for something much simpler, and yet for Ballard, equally unobtainable. Human companionship.

An amazing book that is a worthy recipient of my five star rating.

Greggorio (LR)

I have read sevral of McCarthy's other novels. His best ones stretch something to the limit. In <Blood Meridian> it was violence. Here it is simple depravity and lack of concern for other human beings. Lester Ballard is the ultimate user. Other people exist for him only to meet his needs, even if they are dead. I have never before read a book about necrophilia, and yes, as many of the other reviewers point out, reading this book takes a strong stomach. Yet McCarthy achieves something only the greatest writers can pull off, which is making an unsympathetic character sympathetic. Totally in spite of myself, I found myself cheering Ballard on when he outwits the lynch mob and gets away. The only thing I can imagine more outrageous than this book is a sympathetic portrayal of a child molester. Yet, I believe that this is ultimately a spiritual book. I don't think the title is meant to be ironic. I think we are meant to see that even Lester Ballard really is a child of God.

In the early going, you might be forgiven for thinking that Child of God is going to show you a lighter, or even comic, side of Cormac McCarthy. As the book opens and a local outcast gets evicted from his home amidst a carnival atmosphere and then wanders the town, a bit of a local legend, there's a sense that McCarthy is playing with Southern folk tales, bringing his usually stunning prose to a character who seems less deserving of it than usual. But as Child of God continues, we rapidly begin to realize that there's a dark side to our outcast, and that this isn't a lovable misfit, but a dangerous and unstable man whose eviction from society has loosened him from whatever restrictions he had holding him back. And by the time Child of God hits its stride, it's some of the most unflinching and nightmarish depictions of depravity you've read, all done in McCarthy's harsh, descriptive, poetic, bleak prose. Clocking in at less than 200 pages, it would be easy to consider Child of God a lesser McCarthy work, but in paring down his length and creating a more picaresque narrative rather than something more grounded, McCarthy creates something akin to a fable or a folk tale, spinning a story that feels like it suggests a moral or a lesson without ever coming out and making that clear. Indeed, if there is a moral, it's a cautionary one about the dangers of excluding people from society and the fear of what isolation could wreak, to say nothing of reminding us of how to treat even the "least of these" (as the title certainly seems to allude). But that's not what you'll probably come away thinking; what you'll come away feeling is uncomfortable and horrified, as McCarthy shows us a man unraveling without psychobabble or any sort of inner monologue, instead forcing us to watch as a passive audience. It's a unique experience, and a harrowing one, perhaps all the more so for the black humor that McCarthy keeps injecting when you least expect it. The result is impossible to categorize, hard to recommend, and yet easy to admire and be fascinated by. In other words, it's of a piece with McCarthy's other work, with all the greatness, violence, horror, and brilliance that usually suggests.

Having read "The Road", you would feel that McCarthy hit his peak claiming a Pulitzer in his seventies with an unforgettable story that fostered a mainstream movie. So his other works should be "warm-ups" to this epic, mere channeling to a growing skill that has launched his name (from a whisper to almost a chant) for Nobel Prize level. Right? Not at all.

Each of McCarthy's grand pieces stand on it own. Written in 1973, his third novel reads at a very brisk pace. Not devoid of his grand style of writing, it is very easy to see whom McCarthy pays homage. Set in rural Tennessee, you can see the imprints of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor abundant in the writing. There are moments that even remind me of Bobbie Ann Mason's short fiction, minus the pop culture references that define her stories of Kentucky. But whatever the influence, there is no contesting how dynamic McCarthy can weave a story.

What particularly impresses me is how McCarthy can transcend into different forms of narration. While the first sentence of the novel rolls off in a lengthy third-person reminscent of Faulkner, "Child of God" plays between first person, second person (not commonly seen in literature), and third person. Rarely have a witnessed writing take on this caliber of narration, and McCarthy handles it wonderfully, using very descriptive, yet terse, language to promote the setting, and very simple dialogue and short sentences to progress the plot.

In a country where banning contraversial books has seemed to have acquired a new wind, it is somewhat saddening (yet understanding) to see the restriction of this book. Like his other work, "Child of God" follows the actions of very malicious and immoral southern recluse as he wreaks havoc along the countryside of Tennessee. There is no small quantity of violence or sexuality. Every key punched on his typewriter McCarthy pecked without a whimper nor the hope of any kind of redemption for this subject matter.

McCarthy never seems to answer the question of "why" in any of his works. Just as in "The Road" where an unknown and bygone disaster devastates the journey of a man and boy of unknown name or origin, so in "Child of God" are we given few puzzle pieces to connect together. We are not told what drives Lester Ballard, 27 years old with the world and youth gleaming at his porch step, to become the man that he is. McCarthy invests more of his words on the actions of his characters, not their thoughts, and thus even his simplest sentences imbue a more profound reaction than even the most complex and well executed thought by any character.

Finally, McCarthy does little to draw separation between Ballard and any of the other (seemingly moral) characters. Indeed, on the second page of the story, McCarthy states that Ballard is a "child of God, much like yourself." When the deputy of the local police nonchalantly questions the evolution of behavior of mankind to an old man, he replies, "I don't. I think people are the same from the day God first made one." If there is any moral to this story for me, it is that any "child of God" is capable of doing anything, that freedom of will does not constitute freedom from responsibility no matter what the setting or the individual.

McCarthy is always interesting and provocative. His writing s like a picture or painting or old stories told over the fire come to life. He sets me right in the midst of it, which made this story hard to turn the next page.

This is the first early book of McCarthy's I've read, and part of me is curious to read "The Orchard Keeper" and "Outer Dark," his first two books. But I don't know that I will. The main reason is that "Child of God," when compared to "All the Pretty Horses," "The Crossing," or even "City of the Plain" (which I thought was the least interesting of the border trilogy) comes up short. Though perhaps comparing "Child of God" to the trilogy is unfair. A better comparison would be "Blood Meridian." But when measured against "Blood Meridian," "Child of God" appears shallow, interesting only for its mood, moments of brilliant imagery and grotesque content.

Child of God hints at McCarthy's future works and is interesting within the context of those works, as a measure of the writer's developing craft and vision. But, unlike his later work, "Child of God" never really gets off the ground. The facts of the story are credibly wrought, the writing is stylistic and at times engaging, there are several striking images. But that's it. The story of the recluse, Lester Ballard, and his necrophilia set against a backdrop of a mountain community in the gothic south, would appear to be enough. But there is no transcendence. The novel is little more than reporting of events. We do not know Lester's motivations. His movement from simple recluse to murderer occurs almost coincidently. There is no struggle within Lester. There is no moral clarity offered by the narrator. The reader is not encouraged toward sympathy for Lester. There is no real tension. And for that, the novel fails.

When I consider "Child of God" within the context of "Blood Meridian," trying to point to where the one book succeeds and the other fails (they both after all deal on a fundamental level with the extremes of violence and human depravity) I think of two fundamental differences that work to create the tension and transcendence necessary in a successful novel: character insight and exploration of theme.

In "Blood Meridian," The Kid and The Judge slip farther and farther into a world that is violent and chaotic. As they slide farther into that world, they work to define it and themselves within it. They work to define the world through their own explications in thought and dialogue coupled with the writer's use of imagery, action and fable-like anecdotes. The result is a sense of movement and struggle, a wrestling with grand ideas, a fully formed world in which fully formed individuals--with motivations, with pasts, with futures--are driven toward action.

The protagonist in "Child of God" is not entirely sane, and though I don't believe it is ever stated, Lester is most likely mentally retarded or at least slow. There is no exploration of grand ideas. No theme. His past and future are only sketched. I suppose perhaps McCarthy might be suggesting that Lester is a child of God, and that the reader must then work to make his own moral judgments regarding Lester. But the guy is so awful and his actions so undeniably reprehensible, I doubt that very many readers spend all that much time wondering just where Lester belongs. Rather than reading his earlier works, I may pick up his latest book.

It is odd, I suppose, to call a book "disturbing" and then "beautiful" but a reading of this novel should explain. In beautiful, spare prose, McCarthy tells the disturbing story of Lester Ballard. That he is described in all his grotesque and depravity in almost gentle prose makes this story even more disturbing. I bet that if full-on out there shock was employed by the author, the story would suffer to the point of meaninglessness. As it is, the book is captivating and jaw-dropping in it's horror and in it's beautiful execution. If all one sees is depravity and shock value, then they have missed a great novel.

There is no denying the strain of Faulkner that runs through McCarthy's early works; like his predecessor, McCarthy is concerned less with plot than with character and the many and sundry ways in which character and place (here, the hills of Eastern Tennessee) interact. But McCarthy is more fun to read; his prose is lean and lyric and leaves lasting images in the mind's eye. He does not shrink from displaying humanity in all its ugly (often ungodly) forms. "Child of God" is best-known for its haunting portrayal of necrophilia--few writers could address so ghastly an act in such beautiful, elegant prose. But that is one of the great joys of Cormac McCarthy's early novels--they are not so much tours de force as they are exhibitions of beautifully painted landscape and haunting, nightmarish imagery.

This is what I was going to write as the first line of review, after the first raw, stinking, reeking blast of "Child of God" hit me:

"Cormac McCarthy is such a satanically gifted writer that he could churn out a phonebook & it would be compulsively readable. That's the good news. The bad news is 'Child of God' is that phonebook."

"Child of God" is not where I would recommend a McCarthy neophyte to start with the author: it's deeply twisted, in its own way both blunt and inscrutable, meandering, and apparently plotless, or so it seems at first, winding its way from rustic outrage to wilderland depravity, with very little in the way of sympathetic creatures to cling to.

I gave up on it, tossed it aside---but came back to it a week later, in the mood for something truly monstrous. "Child of God" fit the bill.

Remember Injun Joe from Twain's "Tom Sawyer"? Injun Joe was a monster, a villain clambered up out of Hell, as cunning as he was murderous. But did you ever think Mark Twain may have been too gentle-hearted to let us in on the *real* story---the one not for thd squeamish, the one where Injun Joe wins, & slakes his diseased lusts on poor Tom & Becky in the night-gaunt caverns?

Think of "Child of God" as that apocryphal nightmare chapter of "Tom Sawyer", where McCarthy's wild-eyed, cross-dressing hillbilly necronaut Lester Ballard serves as a kind of tourguide & lodestone of human vileness. Ballard, forged from flesh in God's image, is dispossessed, his farm foreclosed, and so begins a wild, hallucinatory pilgrimage of mass-murder & sexual perversion.

Give this one some time: it's not mere brutal narrative. Cormac McCarthy doesn't just write something down without saying something far deeper, and I think "Child of God" is the perfect anodyne to the fever dream of the Noble Savage: here proof, proof!---that Man in the state of Nature is Nasty, Brutish, & Short. Ballard, literally, is all three.

But one final thought: Ballard is a creature of the elements. He moves like a creature of myth, the satyr, the troll, the troglodyte, through the thickets & swamplands & burrows like a deranged mole deep into the Earth, to recruit his strength, to plot, to scheme, and to attack, he bids the rain fall hard and it floods; he bids the snow to fall faster and it cloaks his tracks; he implores God for a victim to die, and she does.

Who is to say this Child isn't God Himself, sheathed in flesh & wrath & lust & Death for this rustic Second Coming?

JSG

This is a tough one to review.

Cormac McCarthy has created a novel that is extremely confronting but in a sensitive manner, if that is understandable.

The novel centres around Lester Ballard who is a poor misbegotten soul who is uneducated and misunderstood. These issues in combination with a myriad of others leads to Lester doing thimgs that are just unimaginable.

The novel is quite confronting. I found that it was a quick read as the page count was short but the subject matter was such that one would not be able to forget what they had read easily.

It is not a pleasant book to read, the details of the book are such that one would not read it without thinking that they were entering the depths of hell.

Cormac McCarthy has written a novel of depth and sensitivity. Worth reading.

This is a book that will haunt and disturb the reader. A powerful story that explores the deep depths of evil that the human soul can descend to. This book contains dark and graphic subject matter that some readers will not like. If your in the mood for an Appalachian "horror" story that is written poetically... I'd recommend this book.

Be warned this is a haunting tale that will stay with you after your done.

The plot of this book is highly disturbing: a man is turned out of his home and through a series of events (and perhaps a natural inclination to the perverse) he becomes a serial killer/necrophiliac/vagrant. But McCarthy is so adept at storytelling that even the most macabre aspects of this story read rather poetically and somehow the reader is made sympathetic to the grotesque plight of a heretofore unheard of anti-hero.

The pacing is excellent: the text is sparse, composed into short, jarring chapters that propel an already engaging narrative.

In the end, it's a neat little book that packs a hell of a punch with a premise that lingers and disturbs.

This may be the scariest ride in contemporary American fiction. A tale of the crazed Lester Ballard and his gradual slide into absolute depravity--necrophilia is just the beginning of it--this is dark, dark stuff. It could have been merely a freak show in prose, but fortunately we're in the hands of a master stylist, who makes this a rich, haunting, blackly comic experience. Nor is the violence extraneous to the point, as McCarthy puts forth the notion that even a Lester Ballard--"a child of God much like yourself perhaps"--may somehow occupy a vital place in the human family. A first-rate novel.

First of all, this is a very dark book, creepy and depressing throughout!

The book centers around a lonesome man by the name of Lester Ballard, he's a little bit (Hannibal Lecter) and a little bit (Ed Gein). Lester finds a dead girls body, instead of telling someone, he takes her home. After the first one, Lester can't stop!

The story in "Child of God" takes awhile to really get going, but the last half of the book is a page turner!

Highly recommended to all McCarthy fans!

Amazingly this McCarthy book was written in 1973! Wow!

Great short read that takes you to a dark, dark place!

The works of Cormac McCarthy, America's greatest living writer, brim with violence, cruelty and depravity. However, McCarthy is fundamentally a religious writer, whose great themes are sin, wonder and the presence (or absence) of God. Here, his narrative concerns the dark pilgrimage of one Lester Ballard, a Tennessee hillbilly who slips into murder and madness, but is still "a child of God, much like yourself." McCarthy finds his mature and distinctly American voice here, a lyrical distillate of Joyce through Faulkner, tempered with the more clipped cadences of a Hemingway, and steeped in a Catholic Jansenist gloom. A brief, riveting masterwork.

All of the reviews on this book offer a reasonably accurate description of plot and character
so I'll just add this info. When Cormac McCarthy was a young boy, perhaps 5 or 6, his father
moved from the upper east coast to east Tn to become an attorney with the rapidly expanding
TVA system. My romantic side wants to believe that Cormac must have joined his father on many
trips out into the hills of the area around Knoxville and surrounding counties growing up.
His descriptions of the countryside and the people in that region are portrayed in a way that
makes them at once transparent as well as densely opaque. All of his writing has an edge that
is difficult to define but his descriptions of the lay of the land, the light, the texture of
the seasons, as well as the people themselves always move toward some dark end. It's the
complexity of paring down his characters that they become multidimensional, all too human, and
finally unexpectedly crazy.

Anyone who is familiar with McCarthy's work will not be surprised that the depiction of humanity is dire and sullen. In contrast to nature, which can be brilliant, profound, and sublime, mankind is a blight so incendiary that it scorches the earth as it treads. The knee-jerk reaction is to castigate McCarthy's Lester Ballard as the sort of cancer that typifies humanity's affront to nature. However, the reader will find that Ballard is, in a manner, Earth's natural repulsion of mankind cast in physical, human form. He is a creature who inhabits dark, subterranean recesses and decorates his caves with the conquests he has gathered from the world above. He is a predator / scavenger who happens upon his prey in their most vulnerable state / his most opportune chance. All other characters treat him with a level of disgust reserved only for the sort of carrion creatures he is kin to. These characters detect his lusts like a strong, pungent odor. Indeed, we discover that Ballard's motivating force is a sexual craving that can only be semi-realized through intercourse with the dead (as his hunger could never, as we see through interaction with various characters, be actualized with a living, breathing person). He is only able to engage in a misguided, reproductive act only when there is no chance of reproduction. He is only able to physically relate to humans when their humanity is gone and their bodies are about to give back to the earth.

The irony is profound. At first, I was ready to dismiss the title as moral commentary--if we are all "children of God," so too must a Lester Ballard, as he is cut from the same cosmic cloth. A semi-profound statement, depending on what philosophical school one attends. Yet, that realization, coupled with the deeper clarity of the novel (Ballard as an antibody to the human blight) tends toward a closer identification with McCarthy's world view. God is to be found somewhere in the conflict between man and nature. Somewhere between the beauty and ferocity of nature, the grace and degredation of man, is a muddled picture of a greater entity. Through this lens, Ballard is a child of God. He lives by the code of the universe--first rule: survive (and don't ask why); second rule: consume what you crave.

We've all asked the question: Why do some organisms persist in living, at all costs, for the sake of living? Organisms with nothing resembling a quality of life? Organisms without the hope of passing on their genes, furthering the species? The closest thing you will get to an answer from McCarthy is in a passage such as this: "He could not swim, but how would you drown him? His wrath seemed to buoy him up. Some halt in the way of things seems to work here. See him. You could say that he is sustained by his fellow men, like you. Has peopled the shore with them calling to him. A race that gives suck to the maimed and the crazed, that wants their wrong blood in its history and will have it."

This is only the second of McCarthy's books I have read, the other being Blood Meridian. While I have read Blood Meridian 3 times, I would not reread Child Of God. Not to say that Child Of God is a bad book, it is just too disturbing! The violence is far more intimate and upsetting here, than in Blood Meridian. It is like the difference between watching The Wild Bunch and watching a graphic serial killer film. They are both bloody, but the mood is entirely different. A good read, but read with caution!

Prior to reading this I had read The Road and No Country for Old Men, so I at least knew what to expect from McCarthy's writing style. In that respect, this book did not disappoint. Still, it didn't quite seem to live up to the level of the aforementioned titles.

Child of God seemed a bit too disjointed in the wrong way to make it as enjoyable as it could have been. Certain spots, especially between the sections and then in the final act, seem to skip around too randomly to form much of a coherent narrative to wrap up the story.

The ending is fine and the novel on the whole makes sense, but McCarthy does a disservice to his own style of vivid conservatism and choice dialogue to let the yarn pull apart down the stretch.

And yeah, it goes without saying that this one, while not being as violent as No Country, is certainly far more surreal and depraved and in that respect it keeps you interested the entire way. Provided you can stomach that sort of thing.

Cormac McCarthy, Child of God (Vintage, 1973)
[originally posted 13Nov2000]

McCarthy's third novel is spare, stark, and inconceivably humorous, like all of his work. While it's not as lyrically powerful as Blood Meridian, it is easy to see how McCarthy progressed from the nascent power in evidence here to the fully-realized masterpiece that is the latter novel.

Child of God is the story of Lester Ballard, a man much like the rest of McCarthy's heroes; of seemingly substandard intelligence, full of a restless and violent anger which may or may not be the logical extension of his intelligence, set adrift at a critical juncture in his life. In Ballard's case, he is set adrift (at the age of twenty-eight; remarkably older than the protagonists of Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses) after his family's home is seized and sold at auction. (We are never told what happened to his family; draw your own inferences.) Ballard is forced to live in the only way he can; by his wits, wandering from place to place, his only real talent the use of a gun.

McCarthy gives the reader no choice here; you are forced to identify with Ballard in the first few sentences, and despite the heavy-handedness of the comparison (which one assumes is intentional), it works. From there, you're pretty much stuck with Ballard, as if you were the reluctant shotgun-rider on a killing spree (think David Duchovny in Kalifornia, if you like; McCarthy has about as much regard for his reader's emotions as Brad Pitt does for Duchovny's life expectancy, and it's a chilling state of affairs). McCarthy's prose, always sweetly rhythmic, is starker than usual here, and for a McCarthy novel Child of God is a supremely easy read. It will leave you simultaneously feeling dirty (assuming you had problems with being associated with Ballard in the first place; otherwise, vindication is the most likely response) and shedding a private tear for the novel's conclusion. It's not unexpected; this is simple, obvious American metatragedy, and there can really be only one outcome. That doesn't make that outcome any less perfect.

This novel doesn't not get five stars because there's anything wrong with it; it just doesn't quite get to the same level of astonishment that Blood Meridian does. Being the easier novel of the two to read, this may well be a good starting point for those just getting into McCarthy (or those who got lost along the way by McCarthy's diction in All the Pretty Horses). Given that McCarthy is one of a handful of authors who can stake a claim as America's Finest Living Novelist, "getting into McCarthy" shouldn't be a take-it-or-leave-it option. This is one of the pinnacles of American fiction in the twentieth century. **** ½

McCarthy's writing and portrayal of Lester Ballard, a necrophiliac, is so well done that when the townfolk are after him you want him to escape. And then you have to wonder...why am I siding with a necrophiliac of all people? The writing is up to the high standards expected of McCarthy, and as usual he plumbs darker side of the human psyche. The book has an interesting twist to the plot - Ballard is falsely accused of rape, his house is auctioned off and he's left as a social outcast, an animal. He is removed of all his ties to humanity and so becomes the animal. If you like books that deal with the darker side of life then give this a read.

"Child of God" is the story of Lester Ballard, outcast, necrophiliac, and psychopath in the Tennessee mountains. I'm sure some people would find this subject matter repellent, but I think the book has just enough of a lyrical quality to keep it from being too distasteful. In the hands of a less talented writer, it could have degenerated into a silly Stephen King-type horror story. In about two hundred pages, Cormac McCarthy creates a powerful and vivid portrait of a twisted individual, one I don't think I'll ever forget. This book is a perfect companion piece to his earlier novel "Outer Dark." (Both of these books would make great movies.)

Well this was my first Cormac McCarthy book....now I kind of wish I would have tried another one first. I was super excited to start this because I had a friend recommend it to me, and sing it's praises relentlessly. Unfortunately I did not have the same feelings.

I will say that McCarthy is a talented writer, he has a real knack for using words well, the way he describes things is impressive, whether it be a tree or isolation. Which I applaud him for, but at the same time for me, it made it that much more frustrating that other things fell flat. I'm not sure how I felt about the writing style, it was different. It took a little getting used to, distinguishing when someone was talking or when it was just narration. I think that it would have been a little easier to do so if any of the characters, sans Ballard, would have been fleshed out, but alas they were not. It's hard to get to know someone's voice if they rarely ever have one. Ballard was the main character, I mean in all honesty he was mostly the only character. A few other people made appearances but they may as well have just been background noise. No one made much of an impression, or was around enough to really do so.

I think my biggest problem with this story though is that I had a hard time bridging the gap between Lester just being a loner weirdo to basically stumbling upon becoming a murdering, necrophiliac animal. I mean he definitely seemed off at the beginning of the story, but I wouldn't have pictured him capable of the atrocities that came to be. It seemed as if Ballard had never come upon that scene on the side of the road that none of the following horrors would have came to be. I wish there would have been more ground work laid in there. Maybe if I had known more about Ballard or his desires I would have been able to understand how he came to be what he ended up being. I'll give it to McCarthy that it is truly unnerving to think that one coincidence could dramatically alter so much so quickly. I unfortunately just found that a little too much to swallow.

I don't think this will be the last book I read by this author, I would like to see more of his work. I'm thinking maybe this particular one was not for me. I enjoy the books where I walk away feeling something after having read a story, even if it's anger or fear. I've read stories where you are surrounded by villains, or terrible circumstances, and I still enjoyed reading them. The only difference I can really think of between those books and this one is that I was invested in the story and/or the characters. I cared about something, whether it was the outcome, an answer to a question, or whatever. But I just couldn't bring myself to care about much of anything here. Not saying that's a problem with the book, but it was my personal problem with the book.

***Oh total kickass side note and random piece of awesomness....I think that it's hysterical that I share a last name with the psycho in this book. It was fun writing Ballard throughout this entire review, too bad he was so gross.***

Ever hear of Ed Gein? If not this book will be a suprise to you. I was recommended Child of God by a friend. What is at first a simple story about an awful, troll-like man living in a shack becomes a story about an awful, troll-like man who loses his shack and goes to live in a cave, which soon becomes a kind of harem where he keeps the corpses of his dead lovers. You guessed it, necrophilia. With Mccarthy's typically poetic verse, the story is made all the more unsettling with great dashes of prentension thrown in. It's not his best, and suffers from the same problems I typically find in Mccarthy's work. It's a bit boring at times. The above noted pretension is laid on pretty thick - so many incomplete sentences. Certainly not a book for everyone, but certainly one worth a look if you're a Mccarthy fan or someone just into reading about dispicable necromaniacs. Hey, whatever floats your boat.

I've now read most of Cormac McCarthy's works, lacking only "Border Trilogy", "The Orchard Keeper", and "Suttree". I'll get to those presently. This one, however, is another masterpiece and does not disappoint. More interesting than the story of Lester Ballard, the local necrophiliac, is the style McCarthy uses to tell it. He is a very unusual stylist and it is a marvelous thing to read his work, even if the subject is necrophilia. I haven't read McCarthy's works in chronological order, but I am left wondering what is next.

Cormac McCarthy is a gifted writer, no doubt about it. He paints landscapes with words so effectively that the reader feels they're physically present in the countryside he describes. He is equally effective in developing a portrait of Lester Ballard, a homeless man whose desperate existence eventually devolves from casual cruelty to animals into arson, necrophilia and multiple murders. A lot has been written by academics attempting to explain this book, so if you want a more lofty analysis, you might Google "Child of God by Cormac McCarthy". To me, it felt like a retelling of an old Appalachian tale, one passed down in the great oral traditions of the area, a tale meant to show how one should not live one's life, what one should not become, of the perils of existing beyond the fringes of community and its social controls. The main character is depicted very neutrally, without sympathy and without animosity. But the character himself becomes so repugnant that at the end, one is left shaking one's head in deep dismay at the life of Lester Ballard. One might question whether the community contributed significantly to his moral downfall, or whether they were hypocrites who despised Ballard yet turned a blind eye to his activities. I was left at the end haunted by the truly desperate life of Lester Ballad, and by the book's denouement, left wondering whether Lester recognized that he needed to remove himself from the life he had been living or whether he simply needed a warm place to stay and some food to eat....a compelling, deeply disturbing, beautifully crafted book. It will stay with you for days and days...I highly recommend it but it is not light entertainment.

You know a writer's having problems when he writes a barely 200 page "novel," fills it with dozens of chapters less than a page long, yet gives each section a humongous empty header as well so that these paltry "chapters" stretch onto a second page. If this "book" didn't have a Pulitzer Prize winning author's name on it, it'd be roundly drubbed out of most freshman writing seminars.

McCarthy goes to his old familiar wheelhouse of rural despair, minimalist prose, colloquial jargon, absent punctuation and macho ultraviolence to produce what is now a very tired entry in his oeuvre. While his slavering fanbase of pseudo-academics may eat up the newest serving of wannabe Faulkner, any sensible person will tire of the aimless emptiness of this book.

Granted, there are tiny bursts of poetry occasionally juxtaposed with gruesome shock that salvage the otherwise lugubrious and meandering episodes of this book. But as is typical of intellectually weak art, the book is so sparse in both detail and depth that only those dying to see any meaning will find any.

To readers who only engage in traditional "literary" fiction about anguished suburbanites, then indeed this book will feel like a refreshing blast of darkness as they're titillated by its debased incest, rape and murder. But if you're used to reading anything "dark," this work will surely fall towards the bottom of your list.

I've read at least 8 books by McCarthy and after every one I promise myself never to read another again. But it's like rubbernecking a bad accident; I just can't stop myself. He's such a brilliant writer and his prose unmatched. Simply genius. But his stories leave me drained and gloomy. I doubt anyone has portrayed human degradation better than he has in Child of God. That aside, what disturbs me more than the human despair is every book I've read by McCarthy portrays graphic incidents of animal abuse and cruelty, to which I'm extremely sensitive. So while reading through these horrific passages, I chant "it's only a book it's only a book... this really didn't happen". Poor robin, dog, cat....

McCarthy has taken not just the grotesque, but the disgusting, and worked wonders. He points us to our own human depravity through the example of the grendel-like character of Lester Ballard, and by making us care for so lost and lonely a soul. I was horrified not just by Lester and the other characters in the book, but by the realization McCarthy created in me that the line between me and Lester is a thin one, and it may not even exist. If you have a strong stomach I encourage you to read this book, and if you don't, you might want to think about making the sacrifice for the sake of seeing something beautiful and profound in the filth of humanity and reality. -sc

I was initiated into the world of Cormac McCarthy with this novel in Southern Lit class. My professor was the vice president of the Cormac McCarthy Appreciation Society and considers McCarthy one the most talented novelists of the twentieth century, as do I. This work is very much a product of an evolved understanding of Faulkner. It incorporates all of the typical faulknarian literary elements and subject matter, but stretches and evolves them to an unusually intense point. There is a message about decay, especially of the south in the diction, especially where the flood and the degeneration of Lester Ballard are concerned. There is Old South v. New South and the post reconstuction circumstances of the south with the disposession of Ballard. There is also lust here, something that Faulkner tackeled in a more subtle manner than McCarthy in the Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. However, McCarthy's story of lust is intense and grotesque and is described without sentiment in an amazing display of the gift of total candor. McCarthy is nothing short of stoic in his descriptions and must posess an amazing constitution, as he has the ability to write what would make most of us vomit just thinking about. The ability to reduce a human character to the lowest common denomimnator, performing unspeakable acts of depravity and at the same time remaining a valid character whose presence still carries a literary message and a human one as well, is the most unique of gifts. This novel may be hard to take for the faint of heart, but it is well worth the read. It is haunting to the reader, not for its perverse subject matter, but for its understated messages, masterfully placed in the character of Lester Ballard, a disposessed and depraved madman, holding the dark secrets of what humanity can be driven to.

Child of God because who else did he belong to? Necrophiliac because who else could he be in communion with? His existence in a cave is likened to Hell where "dead people lay like saints". McCarthy weaves the tale of a pathetic existence of a man with darkness in his mind. McCarthy expertly holds our attention like a neighborhood murder-suicide, making us despise Ballard at times and then feel sorry for him.

It takes some deep reading to catch the metaphors. For example the 7 bodies found (7 is considered a whole or complete number), he kept watch eastward as he traveled to the county hospital (what was he looking for? Jesus' second coming?). This is a great read. Even though it is a short book, it is worth reading more than once to catch the metaphors.

One among the many of Cormac McCarthy's luminous early works that created his cult following and positioned him as a modern icon of lyrical precision, Child of God delves into the horrific center of American ignorance and human indignity. An early counter-cultural reflection of two of his most recent and more accessible works, The Sunset Limited and The Road, Child of God casts the utter depravity of McCarthy's character Lester Ballard into an increasing dispossession resonant of the dark core of violence that has always accompanied American life. The title redeems both Lester and the reader.

I read this book after reading several of Cormac McCarthy's later books - Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, The Road - and I really enjoyed seeing several of the classic McCarthy themes at play. Lester Ballard is alienated, psychologically disturbed (to say the least), and downright lonely. But, he seems to move with a mission, a real calling...like any of us have callings. McCarthy's narrator in this book refers to the reader as "you" a few times in this book, and it helps the oral tradition side of the story, as if we were hearing about a homicidal maniac named the Appalachian Terror while sitting around a campfire. Some of McCarthy's attempts at style seem to fall short, or seem rather forced, though; it's comforting to know he's ironed out those kinks in his later works.

Anyone who has ever pondered the question of "Nature vs Nurture" and found compelling arguements on both sides will come away still wondering the "truth" after reading this novel. Be warned this book is very graphic in nature, but if you can stomach it, this is a book you will not easily forget. Leave it to Cormac McCarthy to write a novel so grotesquely original in subject that you will find yourself locked in until the very last page. Only such a talented and superb author can create a character so hainous and dispicable and in the telling of his story can make the reader feel a strange sense of compassion for him at the end. This book is a must read for all McCarthy fans.

This is the book that started my love of McCarthy. And it remains my favorite. I've wandered through a number of his other works, the popular ones like No Country and The Road, and the not so popular like The Crossing and Suttree, and this remains, far and beyond my favorite work by McCarthy. Outer Dark and Blood Meridian are distant runners up--which might give you an idea of where my appreciation for Cormac lies.
This book deals with taboo issues, which, is not unfamiliar territory for Cormac. But it's HOW Cormac deals.with the issues that I appreciate. In lesser hands, subjects like incest and necrophilia become mere vessels for shock or degraded humor or simple horror at worst. At best they're plot points for well-developed characters. But in McCarthy's hands, they become something more, something insidiously meditative or thought-provoking in the pragmatic simplicity with which their dealt. These taboos are less concerns for motivation than they are simple.parts of life, mere inevitabilities. And in Cormac's acknowledgement of man's true nature, such taboo subjects are no more offensive than a petty theft. The "crimes" are not romanticized, the deeds are not embellished, the characters are not degrades little villains to be looked down upon at the behest of the author. No, Cormac treats his characters more in an unbiased documentary fashion, pragmatic in his prose, which leaves the READERS to decide their opinion of the characters. We are not guided toward disdain or calloused inhumanity, but are left to our own contemplation of man and man's nature.
In no other work do I find this more true.
And done in such wondrous, contemplative prose.
I feel this book is a character study like none other I've come across. It's beautiful, dense in its brevity, and leaves you in contemplation to make your own decision of Lester Ballard.

I really enjoyed McCarthy's Child of God. I personally enjoy his writing style, though I know many are frustrated by it. He is not one for using much punctuation or quotation marks. The actual content and his way with words make up for this, anyway.

While it was fairly disturbing (involving lots of violence and necrophilia), it was a really captivating read. The novel follows Lester Ballard, a backwoodsman who lives in the mountains of Tennessee. He certainly showed many negative stereotypes of Appalachians, uneducated, isolated, and violent. Even with the way he was depicted, it was interesting how McCarthy manages to make the reader see Ballard. I definitely was not on Ballard's side by the end of the novel, however, I couldn't help but feel kind of bad as he just seemed like he did not know any better.

While it’s clearer and easier to read (and I say that loosely) than Outer Dark, the dark theme still runs uncomfortably throughout. Like that novel, it summoned the primal ugliness that which human beings have capacity. It does so in a pervasive atmosphere of dread. Lester Ballard's dark plight evokes one of pity and the need for some sort of understanding for his psychotic disorder. My feeling is McCarthy was trying to illustrate what the loss of dignity can do and what tragedy can come out of freedom from society’s constraint as well.

Very quick read. As always McCarthy has a way with words that pulls you into the novel and makes you think and examine life around you, no matter how disturbing the circumstances it's hard not to keep turning pages.

This is like seeing a wreck along side the road. You are horrified by what you see, but just can't look away either. McCarthy's novel falls in to that category, it's a short read and I couldn't put it down. Lester Ballard is one messed up individual, insane by circumstances? Maybe. Never the less insane, and this book delves into his life and the intriging characters that add to it. When I finished the book,( having completed "The Road" prior) all's I could think about was getting my hands on another novel from McCarthy, he's an amazing author.

Bought this book based on some good reviews and hoopla on Cormac McCarthy. Actually bought several books by this author. Child Of God is somewhat of an interesting read. It jumps around a lot, little short chapters with ancedotes about the main character but I didn't see what relevence it had to the story(?). Basically, some society depraved, uneducated guy who lives in abandoned shacks and caves in the woods who kills people for the heck of it and then does unspeakable things to the females after they're dead. Not much of a story line, but the deeds this guys keeps doing, well, out of curiosity, you just keep reading to see. But in the end, very disappointing and you don't feel good after reading it. Suggest a pass on this one. By the way, I read 3 other of McCarthy's books and I will say this was one of the easier ones to read compared to the others.

I've made the mistake of reading Cormac McCarthy in reverse chronological order, having started with "No Country for Old Men", "The Road", the Border Trilogy and Blood Meridian before picking up "Child of God". I enjoyed the book but it makes apparent how McCarthy has grown and evolved as an author and storyteller. Many of the elements I loved in the later books are here only embryonic and not fully realized. McCarthy paints a landscape that is disturbing and dangerous, and made more so being very recognizable to those not caught in the throes of the depicted depravity. This was a satisfactory, but McCarthy has produced better. All the books above are well worth reading.

Cormac McCarthy's 1973 novel, "Child of God" suggests the themes and style of his later, more lauded works, but it is too derivative of Faulkner to stand as genius in its own right. Whereas Faulkner is able to humanize and therefore garner sympathy for his marginalized, seemingly subhuman characters, one merely winces at the sociopathy of McCarthy's Lester Ballard, a deranged, itinerant petty thief and murderer who fittingly occupies the caverns beneath the surface of civilization. Homeless by any definition, he preys on the local population in shockingly depraved ways. Having been convicted of a crime he did not commit and thereby losing his house to auction, he is destabilized psychologically to the point of psychosis. These events might stir the reader's sympathy, but nothing in Ballard's temperament arouses anything but horror. It is as if McCarthy gets off on creating the most despicable characters imaginable, depicting the darkest displays of human depravity without evincing a corresponding empathy for the disengagement and psychological impairment of the seemingly damned amongst us. Since even his style is reminiscent of Faulkner, as well as his depiction of human evil and themes of senseless violence and ignorance, I am loathe to grasp the genius attributed to him by the critics.

Admittedly it would be hard for a reader to relate to Ballard, but in the hands of a Faulkner, one does, recognizing and even empathizing with the alienated likes of Joe Christmas because the genius of Faulkner is to make absolutely clear the depth of human deprivation Christmas and others of Faulkner's creation have experienced while at the same time expanding the depth and complexity of the character through meaningful action, dialogue and internal. Faulkner's characterization is incisive indeed without his spelling out all aspects of the personalities. It is fair to say that all of Faulkner's characters are deeply flawed, but compared to McCarthy's, his are multidimensional portraits, never so extreme and so evil that they are without the possibility of redemption. However heinous their acts of retribution or aggression, they possess the requisite complexity to allow for identification by most readers. I would argue that McCarthy's perpetrators of violence are without redemptive characteristics; they are mere psychopaths, more animal like than human, degraded beyond belief and therefore not only unsympathetic but so heinous we don't care. They are insignificant in the human landscape since their actions are totally nihilistic and they express no regret. They are devoid of reflection and as such are not human. Ballard may be "a child of God," one of His creations, but he is so despicable that no reader or human can relate to him, forgive him or understand him. McCarthy's ironic epithet merely rings hollow and too obvious, silly. Does he consider this title insightful?

One gets the impression the author clearly wants to blame society for the depravity and malfunction of its mentally disturbed, but is not content to imply just mankind's malfeasance, but to suggest apocalyptic repercussions for all, including the so-called protectors of society's values such as lawmakers and ordinary people of no particular distinction, such as many of the protagonist's victims. Man is dark and evil, the institutions of his own making propagating his tendency toward depravity. Thus is Ballard merely a symbol of most men's nefarious tendencies. In one of McCarthy's more unbelievable and somewhat purple passages describing Ballard's actions, the author darkly comments: "he came up flailing and sputtering and began to thrash his way toward the line of willows that marked the submerged creek bank... His wrath seemed to buoy him up. Some halt in the way of things seems to work here. See him. You could say that he's sustained by his fellow men, like you." In this didactic passage, McCarthy affixes blame on man's depravity; it is clearly the fault of every so-called civilized member of society that moral pygmies exist to perpetrate their crimes against humanity.

He goes on to comment, "Has peopled the shore with them calling to him. A race that gives suck to the maimed and the crazed, that want their wrong book in its history and will have it. But they want this man's life." It is man that is "maimed" and "crazed," man that demands vengeance in the name of lynching or execution or "justice." Nor can the author resist preaching further when he says, "He has heard them; in the night seeking him with lanterns and cries of execration." This, too, is derivative of Faulkner and Morrison, but it doesn't work any more than imitation ever truly substitutes for genius. When finally he ends his description of Ballard coming out of the water, he must overdo the description once again by injecting his overstated judgmental tone with the purple sentence, "There he turned and shook the rifle alternately at the flooded creek at the gray sky out of which the rain still fell grayly and without relent and the curse that hailed up above the thunder of the water carried to the mountain and back like echoes from the clefts of bedlam." This is pretentious prose. It is overstated, derivative and intrusive in the context. Although both Faulkner and Morrison would depict similar disassociated individuals, they would also suggest a strand of humanity and an understandable cause in their characters' lack of wholeness.

Lyrical and judgmental in their own rights, both Morrison and Faulkner would subjugate their opinionated tone to clear, complex characterization that did not seem contrived and was not superficial, as I would argue Ballard's depiction is. Finally, McCarthy's observation that "Nothing moved in that dead and fabled waste, the woods garlanded with frostflowers, weeds spiring up from white crystal fantasies like the stone lace in a cave's floor," is simply another example of overwriting. Not only is this almost a comical imitation of Faulkner's elegiac style, it's pretentious and corny. It seems that once a writer is established, critics simply overlook examples of disingenuousness and naiveté.

Similarly, another example of prophet-like diction reminiscent of Faulkner is the passage, "Whatever voice spoke to him was no demon but some old shed self that came yet from time to time in the name of sanity, a hand to gentle him back from the rim of his disastrous wrath." The reader has already digested Ballard's intense anger; the author does not need to interpose omniscient narrative commentary. It falls flat, is not the same quality of epiphany Faulkner does so effortlessly and without pretense. Particularly absurd is McCarthy's description of Ballard in all his wasted glory: "He sat there soaking his feet and gibbering, a sound not quite crying that echoed from the walls of the grotto like the mutterings of a band of sympathetic apes." This is an absurd simile since it's clichéd and an example of over-crafted diction since the author has already belabored the sub-human temperament of the man. Another such example is "Ballard's shadow veering dark and mutant over the cupped stone walls," one of his typical fragments that the author must like the sound of but which ultimately is so contrived it does not achieve its desired effect. McCarthy uses a lot of such fragments, but he tends to overstate in an attempt to impress with artificial rhetoric, such as in the fragment, "Thin fissures traversing the otherwise blank of his corroded mind."

McCarthy alternates such observations as that of a woman, "I never knew such a place for meanness," with another "old woman" proclaiming "it's a judgment. Wages of sin and all that." To the woman, this explains the catastrophic flood in the town, but it is just another example of the themes of human depravity, God's vengeance and the absurdity of the human condition, themes that inundate this book. Finally, in an interminably long passage, the omniscient voice delineates a lynching as if to label the South (Tennessee) as an example of universal cruelty in mankind. Bruce Springsteen says it so much more eloquently in his understated, "There's just a meanness in this world."

From my viewpoint, this book is highly overrated. Although it expresses many of McCarthy's later themes and reveals much about his literary intentions, it simply does not measure up to great literature. For one thing, as I've mentioned, it's derivative. Moreover, it is too didactic and overwritten to be considered an example of well crafted fiction. In the end it is too "much sound and fury, signifying nothing," filled with observations that most people acknowledge about human life but which as an intrinsic part of the thematic development must manifest more than copycat techniques, sensational characters and overwrought prose to be considered art.

Marjorie Meyerle
Colorado Reviewer
Author of "Hungry Heart"

Lester Ballard is not a man whom you would like to have as family. His story is sad, strange, weird, creepy...and downright fascinating. McCarthy is a master at minimalistic prose and jagged descriptions that put you right into the scenes. This book disturbed me...I would recommend it.

This is the story of Lester Ballard, a demented misfit that roams the mountains of East Tennessee Appalachia. He wanders lonely reaching for companionship and intimacy in any way he can. Sad story that heads down the inevitable bad road.

Another masterpiece from arguably the best writer of our time. Amazing how gripping Mr. McCarthy can make a relatively short story. Do yourself a favor and read all of his books, if you haven't already done so.

It doesn't even seem like McCarthy. Gone are the finely woven stories of the Border Trilogy. This novel feels like an unfinished work, a mere outline to a real McCarthy novel. I was disappointed in the lack of depth of the characters; I never cared about Lester, nor had any inkling as to why he had turned so rotten. I did notice, every now and then, the beautiful prose that the author's known for, but the story was never fleshed out.

Don't start reading McCarthy here as one reviewer suggested, it might turn you off to one of the great story tellers of his generation. Start with the Border Trilogy books, you will get a much better sense of the writer.

one of the oddest and most oddly haunting book I have read in years. Not an easy read, but with some of the clearest description of people ground to inhuman dust by poverty and isolation. Amazing book. I could not put it down.

Whew! Cormac McCarthy is no doubt one of the most gifted southern writers that we have alive today. Maybe this style of writing is really southern gothic but that description is limiting. This was a hard read. The content is graphic and beautiful at the same time. I am southern and though I am not like the characters; the canter and beat of the language are kin to me. Once again, a tough read but worth it. I am now a faithful reader of Cormac McCarthy, but in small increments.

wow, cool read. this guy knows how to get you to semi like a guy and feel some what
of empathy for him, and whammy...you're not supposed to like this guy, but you do. you find yourself rooting for him. sometimes, you even climb in the book with him to partake in your own sick twisted imaginations. i know i took care of a couple of enemies in my life. ha. great read and a fast one, which is a nice breather in between some bigger books. holds your interest well. started off a little slow but builds into a fury. third mccarthy book i've read and to list them in order of which i enjoyed the best: 1.the road 2. no country for old men 3. child of god. this is no cut on this book, it is still great. i'm definitely on to a next mccarthy book, probably blood meridian or the orchard keeper. enjoy.

This is another excellent work by Cormac McCarthy, although I wouldn't say that it's quite as good as The Road or No Country For Old Men. It's quite a haunting and disturbing novel that's quite a quick read.

The Road, No Country for Old Men...get the "f" out of the way...big swinging dick, Child of God is a-coming through. You read this gem and you know from whence The Road loped, dark Southern Gothic fare. O'Connor on roids with a touch of acid. Child of God, dare, oh yes, dares to simply be, exist. Child of God simply falls from the page, the realized birth of a great wordsmith and writer, bloody afterbirth and all. Birth, yes a birthing, of both character, art and artist. Text, subtext -- that jazz, yeah it's all here.

"Emote, feel, breath," commands McCarthy of his character. Yep that's right, McCarthy sucks you in, slaps you around, makes you cower, cry, heave, vomit, shower...all the stuff a one in a thousand piece of art does.

This book was compelling. McCarthy writes in a manner that requires thought and a strong stomach. His use of language is exquisite. His commentary on religious beliefs is eye opening. When reading this book the thought that we are all gods children makes one reconsider religion.

This book is not for the easily offended or a young audience. While reading this novel, I was shocked yet could not put it down. The main character, Lester Ballard, is disturbing but somehow the author makes the reader have empathy for him. VERY SHOCKING and DISTURBING!

McCarthy's ability to observe people and their surroundings and draw them on the page is unmatched by any living author. Comparisons with Faulkner and Melville are common and well founded.

Like any work of art, this book evokes emotions in a powerful way. We may not care for the images before us, but there is no denying that Lester Ballard is not so different from any of us, another "child of God."

I love Cormac McCarthy. I find his minimalist writing style fluid and effective, normally. This book was crap. Who is the protagonist, the depraved murderer and necrophiliac Lester Ballard, or the seemingly disinterested towns folk? There is no emotion or energy in the book. We are never given any justification or explanation for Ballard's dastardly deeds or for the incredibly apathetic reaction to his murders by the town. I gave the book two starts because the pros are well written and the book was short. If this were the first C.M. book I had read, I fear I never would have read the rest of his works. If you want to dip your toe into C.M., please start with Blood Meridian. It's quite long, but very much worth the effort.

If you're considering buying the Peter Smith "edition" of this book, note that it is NOT a new "edition" in hardcover but the Vintage International edition rebound in red cloth, with the cover of said trade paperback glued onto the front. It looks like it's been rebound for libraries, is the type of thing that's usually not for sale to the general public (. . .) The book is WELL-REBOUND, and may still be worth it to you Cormac McCarthy diehards out there -- it is for me, and ultimately I'm just gonna keep the copy of it I bought, but it's still quite disappointing. Thought you deserved a warning, hope it came in time. McCarthy's a great writer, of course -- feel a little guilty about the one-star, but it's an issue of the edition, not the book.

McCarthy is a wordsmith's wordsmith. I used his book in two classes I taught, and it was well-received. Perhaps it had something to do with the main character's taste in women.

I would recommend this book to anyone who doesn't mind considering the darkest desires of some individuals. In fact, I just recommended the book not too long ago.

J. Michael Dew,
author of All the Bad Things

Cormac McCarthy has written one excellent book (No Country For Old Men), two very good books (Blood Meridian, The Road), and a lot of pretentious, overrated books. This is the worst. Although I imagine this story of a psychopath and the psycho things he does might have had SOMETHING of value to offer when it was first released, there has since been a glut of books on the subject, and many, MANY that are FAR superior to this one.

Do you giggle uncontrollably when poking corpses with a stick? If so, look no further, this book is for you.

I understand a book like this will appeal to a certain demographic. I guess I shouldn't have expected much, and I certainly didn't expect a literary masterpeice, but this was the first book in awhile I just felt like giving up on. I didn't, since it's so short, but I may just as well have. It is not that the book is so "grotesque" or "disturbing" as seen described elsewhere. The author either left out or was incapable of the proper narrative to make the potentially disturbing scenes at all vivid. Unfortunately, that applies to all aspects of this book.

The entire book is in rural vernacular, including ignoring proper punctuation. But the end result is that nothing is described in any detail. It's like reading a poorly worded list of stuff that happened. It's almost as if he wasn't really trying very hard, or as if the story really was told by a simpleminded country person - an omniscient one that can read people's minds. I suppose the idea could have worked, but doesn't. Not a terrible read, just annoying and vague. With so many other good books out there, why waste your time?

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy.

This review will be brief. A more appropriate title, in my opinion, would have been child of Satan.

This was not a mystery as I understand a mystery. It is the most gross story of an individual with no moral compass whatsoever. A life(if you can call this a life) of the lowest sort. I am surprised that I actually stay with this story at all and that an author of this caliber wrote it in the first place.

Although a fan of McCarthy, this was an overall disappointment. At his best, McCarthy can create a sense of space that almost makes you dread turning the next page. Not so here. Try Blood Meridian, Outer Dark, Border Trilogy for McCarthy at his best.

How could this book have been written by Cormac McCarthy? As a tale of a small-town degenerate hooked on murder, necrophilia, and seemingly random violence, it has no redeeming qualities at all. It sounds like a Mel Gibson movie, for goodness' sake. The principal character, Lester Ballad, sets out to explore the depths of human behaviour after his home property is foreclosed and he is falsely accused of rape. He thereafter leaves no dead woman unscathed by his wanton phallus. There is no moral to this story, the reader does not come to empathise with Ballard, and the story is not entertaining. The only good trait to the book is the solid, well-paced story telling.

If you are feeling good about anything do not read this book...but if you have had some hard times and like beautiful writing..go ahead.. The main character in this book is in such a terrible mess and always goes the wrong way..the book will make your life seem like a piece of cake. Not for youth , not for the shy and not for me.

I heard that Cormac McCarthy was considered a great American writer, and picking up this book, I randomly opened to a graphic description of the most obscene and putrid events I have ever seen on the printed page. The dark and disturbing image of the rape of a dead body remained with me for days. This is not a book that should be placed with other great authors on the bookstore shelves, accessible to readers of any age. There should be a warning and a XXX rating accompanying such a grim work. I felt like I needed to wash out my mind with soap. There are so many truly good books to read, please avoid this one like the plague, because no good can come of such a book.

Cormac McCarthy may have grown up in the suburbs of Knoxville and been a student in its private schools and UT but that doesn't mean he knows anything about the mountains or its people. This book wasn't written by a student of Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy isn't Faulkner. This book and the subsequent film are trash and the time I spent reading and viewing them was time wasted.

This is the first book I have read by McCarthy.The premise was good but he just does not have the talent to flesh it out.The first half of the book was just a conglomeration of mini one or two page shorts.I guess they were to lay some kind of background for the rest of the story or just to fill pages.The rest of the book that could have been a good gore fest was so poorly written it just scans over what could have been a real gorey thrill ride.I found this book at the library while looking for another book of his called THE ROAD.I sure hope it is better written than this one.I now have The Road If you are interested on my take on it check out its reviews.

A waste of beautiful prose and dialog. Disturbing for the sake of disturbing. Lacking any of the emotion that has made the disturbance in McCarthy's other novels lead to insight and in many cases, redemption.

This book was too weird for me, it was just too graphic. I read it only because it has caused a controversy in an area school. The teacher that allowed his student to read this book has now been fired. I know that I don't want my own kids to read this book. Mr. McCarthy has done much better with his other works.