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Child of God

3.86 of 5 stars 3.86 · rating details · 8,572 ratings · 867 reviews

In this taut, chilling novel, Lester Ballard - a violent, dispossessed man falsely accused of rape - haunts the hill country of East Tennessee when he is released from jail. While telling his story, Cormac McCarthy depicts the most sordid aspects of life with dignity, humor, and characteristic lyrical brilliance.

Paperback, 208 pages

Published June 29th 1993 by Vintage (first published 1973)

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Feb 08, 2012 Shan Jago rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As the title suggests Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God is a rosy, heartwarming (heck, smoldering) tale to read aloud on a winter’s eve. Sit the children by the fire (no no, not in the fire) and wrap them up real cozy while they sip their marshmallowed cocoa – because Child of God is a treat the entire family can enjoy. Each chapter is short so have some fun while you take turns reading. And after the kids are tucked away in dreamland, well, perhaps you and the lovely Missus can reenact some of the...more

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Aug 28, 2008 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone that thinks the public school system is unimportant.

'Child of God' is the third McCarthy book that I have read over the past few weeks. I usually try to stay away from any kind of review or description of a book just prior to reading, but I had recently come across the fact that this was supposed to be McCarthy's darkest work.

Boy, I'll say.

This book will make you feel like you need a long shower afterwards. I believe that this was the same affect that Ellis was going for in 'American Psycho', but I think that McCarthy out-Batemaned him on this on...more 'Child of God' is the third McCarthy book that I have read over the past few weeks. I usually try to stay away from any kind of review or description of a book just prior to reading, but I had recently come across the fact that this was supposed to be McCarthy's darkest work.

Boy, I'll say.

This book will make you feel like you need a long shower afterwards. I believe that this was the same affect that Ellis was going for in 'American Psycho', but I think that McCarthy out-Batemaned him on this one. This book caused many more squirmy moments for me than 'American Psycho' did. The reason for the four stars is because of McCarthy's writing style. He intrigues me as a writer because his prose seems to be very sparse, yet at the same time oddly descriptive. In any given scene he seems to focus on the things that no other writer would focus on, and this gives his work a certain eerieness.

'Child of God' evidently falls into what is known as McCarthy's "Appalachian Period". What this means as far as this book is that we get to witness the ugliness of life that is brought about by extreme poverty and ignorance with little possibility of a reprieve from either. Leading the charge is main character Lester Ballard, who is on a real redneck rampage. Imagine the character of Ernest T. Bass from the Andy Griffith show and Buffalo Bill from 'Silence of the Lambs' having a love child. Then imagine this child having all of the charm and warmth of the toothless fellow that defiled Ned Beatty and his tighty whities in 'Deliverance' and you pretty much have a composite sketch of Lester Ballard.

The tone of the story reminded me of 'No Country For Old Men' in that it is basically McCarthy saying "here's a disturbing story, let's take a closer look...". The sheriff in this one is not as fleshed out as a character as the one in 'No Country', so I didn't even pick up on any higher moral messages that may have been afoot.

Basically, if you like McCarthy beyond the sphere of Oprah, you have probably already read this book. If you like that squirmy feeling that arises during off-kilter scenes of violence and sex, by all means give this one a try.

Now it's time for a couple of tangents for my own amusement...

First, does anyone else have a fixed mental image of a writer when reading a literary work? The most obvious example of this would be the one picture everyone has seen of Poe or Emily Dickinson. My mental image of McCarthy was always that of the wisened old guy of amazing reproductive prowess. If you don't know the one I speak of, go to the quotes section and type in his name. However, I learned from the back cover of this book that back in the Seventies he was the John Holmes of reclusive, literary types. If you care to see for yourself, here's a link...
http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/images/...

Second and more seriously, I am intrigued by the potential history of a book. If it's used or from the library I always wonder who else has held this book and what did it mean to them? Of course at the same time I am hoping against hope that it was not a nose-picker or chronic pimple-popper, and so it goes. The reason for bringing this up is because I checked this book out from the same library that I often frequented as a small child. The copyright is 1973 and the library stamp is 1974, so the book has been there almost as long as i've been alive. I'm just curious how many times I may have tottered past the shelf on my way to play with the puppets or check out 'The 500 Hats of Bartholemew Cubbins' for the twenty-seventh time completely unaware of this little seething slab of darkness that awaited. Also, this town is the epitome of conservatism and fundamentalism (rush limbaugh grew up here, if that gives you a clue) so what the heck is this book doing in our library? The only other McCarthy books that they have in stock are the "Big Three" from the last few years. Was the person in charge of ordering books in '74 simply unaware, or was it all a part of a plan to throw a monkey wrench in the system? Alas, some questions can never be answered and all self-indulgences (including this one) must come to an end. (less)

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Jan 22, 2011 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: hidden-gems, novels

ME AND CORMAC, WE GO BACK A LONG WAY.

This was a re-read, my first for years, and once again I loved Cormac's outrageous, daring style. I gave it five stars all those years ago and I give it five now. I felt again that I was in the presence of a writer who could dip all the other American writers in his Weetabix and mush em all together and eat em up and go for another bowl of em. This guy is the real deal. Well allright! So how come I didn't like any other CMcC book if he's such a wow? Good ques...more ME AND CORMAC, WE GO BACK A LONG WAY.

This was a re-read, my first for years, and once again I loved Cormac's outrageous, daring style. I gave it five stars all those years ago and I give it five now. I felt again that I was in the presence of a writer who could dip all the other American writers in his Weetabix and mush em all together and eat em up and go for another bowl of em. This guy is the real deal. Well allright! So how come I didn't like any other CMcC book if he's such a wow? Good question, you know. I had a go at "Blood Meridian", and as everyone knows, that's like reading the Bible if God was Sam Peckinpah. Beautiful beautiful writing completely squandered on an endurance-test Western with zero story and zero character. So I failed there. "All the Pretty Horses" - well, that was better, and I did finish it, but by now Cormac's style has got ever more outre, he's much more deeply in love with the conjunction and and by then he'd got too mythtastic for my taste. I still like my soap-opera, thank you, I’m just this suburban gentleman in a semi-detatched house with a cat and a bottle of real ale and a High Llamas cd. Myths? Not so much. So I think Cormac and me had a parting of the ways. But if I recall right, before we bade farewell and he took the road west, we shook hands cordially. It felt cordial, that is, although his face betrayed no expression.

THIS WILL MELT YOUR FACE

As to "Child of God" - this book is a total treat, but I got to warn you, the main character is a little unsavoury. Lester Ballard, our grisly necrophile protagonist, has quite a bit of the old Ed Gein about him. Which if so would make him the fourth fictional incarnation of Ed, so inspirational was he, and that is leaving aside the biopic about him, which is called "Ed Gein". There was Hitchcock's Psycho, there was ol' Leatherface in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (was ever a film so aptly titled - it was in Texas, there was a massacre, it was done with a chainsaw) and there was the regrettable Buffalo Bill in "The Silence of the Tiny Little Baa-Lambs" with his human skin dresses. Now Barbara Gowdy, in her arresting story "We So Seldom Look On Love", makes a case that there are indeed true necrophiles, people that only love people if they're dead. (Imagine the fate of a necrophile who's looking for commitment! I guess the only solution there would be taxidermy.) But I argue that the great majority of necrophiles wind up with the dead through poor lifestyle choice and low self esteem. They are just lonely. But in a special way. You and me, we may have been through lonely times, you may still be going through those times, and I only wish I could reach my hand through this screen and give your shoulder a little squeeze, wouldn't that be nice, hmm, maybe it wouldn't, can you imagine if you booted up your computer and all these arms came out, wiggling around? Doesn't bear thinking about - I digress - this loneliness that we have suffered was still on the planet Earth, it was a recognisable, common emotion. We could have been rescued at any time. These necrophiles though, the loneliness of these guys is a cold cold moon of Pluto. They are off the scale of ordinary inabilities to communicate, to invite affection, they are the antimatter of human dalliance. They make autists look like quiz-show comperes. The only date they've been on is where they shoot em in the back of the head and lug em home. That's a date. Of sorts. Now Lester Ballard, if he could only of met a nice girl some time in his early life and could of settled down somewhat, it may have been the making of him. But he never met the right gal. And he took the wrong turn in life. The way it goes sometimes.

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Sep 17, 2010 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature, favorites

HE SEEZ DEAD PEOPLE. THEN FUCKS THEM.

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Aug 25, 2010 Architeuthis rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1970s, literature, cormac-mccarthy

My review just got completely deleted. I'm starting over, and it will be EVEN BETTER maybe.

There's a creek that winds along behind my parents house in downtown Indianapolis. It's barely more than a trickle, barely enough to get your feet wet when you're wearing shoes with thick soles. It was just wide enough that my ten year old self had to jump to make it across. But it was the wildest, most natural thing I'd known at that age, and I followed that son of a bitch.

I walked down one direction to...more My review just got completely deleted. I'm starting over, and it will be EVEN BETTER maybe.

There's a creek that winds along behind my parents house in downtown Indianapolis. It's barely more than a trickle, barely enough to get your feet wet when you're wearing shoes with thick soles. It was just wide enough that my ten year old self had to jump to make it across. But it was the wildest, most natural thing I'd known at that age, and I followed that son of a bitch.

I walked down one direction to where it reached a sewage pipe. (This review will get gross. Let me warn you now.) Not to be deterred, I bought a flashlight from the grocery store and walked through the pipe for a long time, finally coming out on the other side of a busy road. Feeling accomplished, I walked back overground, knowing where my next adventure along the creek would start.

That was the pattern: I'd bike to the last place where I'd followed the creek, hide my bike, and then continue following. It became more and more time consuming as it wound farther and farther from our backyard. It became wider, wilder, as it went. One day, I came to an old tool box buried in the dirt. I dug it up, hoping to find some buried treasure, or at least some forgotten toys some other kid had buried. All I found inside was water and dirt, but I returned awhile later to put some treasure in the box: some old toys I didn't play with anymore.

Eventually, I wandered down that creek far enough to reach the end in one direction. The narrow creek had gradually expanded by that point to ten or eleven feet across, but now it blossomed into a tremendous lake. Or so it seemed at the time. This small lake was surrounded by high grass, trees, some weed-like flowers, and a light dusting of garbage from downstream and from the nearest roads. You could see two busy roads far in the distance, but I wanted some private piece of nature bad enough that it felt to me like a nature preserve. I spent about half of the day exploring around the lake, and got in a shitstorm of trouble when I got back home. According to Mom, that wasn't a "lake" I'd been exploring; it was a "gravel pit," which was very "dangerous," and I should never go back.

I went back.

If I had to explain my love for McCarthy's writing, I don't know that I could. I could tell you that, ever since childhood, I've prefered the cracked and broken to the new and shiny. I could tell you I've written dozens of poems about moss and gravestones, and am uninterested in writing about anything much more complicated. It's an ingrained aesthetic, and I don't know what childhood trauma or early experience lies behind it, but it carries over into the books I read, the colors I like, and just about everything.

Anyway, to conclude my review of the book: Cormac McCarthy is me. Lester Ballard, his protagonist, is the river. Lester has gravel pits and leaves a nasty taste in your mouth, and he's not there to make you happy, but McCarthy pursues his dark character so perfectly that you kind of end up feeling for the backwoods pervert by the end of it all. (The river/Ballard is the pervert, not McCarthy/me.)

This is yet another terrific book by McCarthy, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in reading about depraved backwoods hilljacks who do just about everything gross imaginable. (less)

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Dec 26, 2012 Ginny rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: america, romanzi

Un romanzo duro, crudele, pervaso da un'atmosfera di violenza e di degrado. Una storia di solitudine, miseria e disperata follia.
Ma alle scene più atroci e raccapriccianti si alternano passaggi inattesi e stupendi di lirica dolcezza e di struggente commozione.
Lester Ballard è una figura immane nella sua barbarie spaventosa: piccolo, magro e cattivo, non piace a nessuno e tutti lo mantengono a prudente distanza. È cresciuto così e così continua la sua esistenza: defraudato dell’infanzia, di ogn...more Un romanzo duro, crudele, pervaso da un'atmosfera di violenza e di degrado. Una storia di solitudine, miseria e disperata follia.
Ma alle scene più atroci e raccapriccianti si alternano passaggi inattesi e stupendi di lirica dolcezza e di struggente commozione.
Lester Ballard è una figura immane nella sua barbarie spaventosa: piccolo, magro e cattivo, non piace a nessuno e tutti lo mantengono a prudente distanza. È cresciuto così e così continua la sua esistenza: defraudato dell’infanzia, di ogni affetto e dell’esigua proprietà familiare; indurito dall’abbandono, dalla diffidenza e dalle difficoltà quotidiane. E, a contorniarlo, una piccola comunità di individui collocabili come lui sul gradino più basso della gerarchia sociale e dell’umanità; preda, come lui, degli istinti più abietti e bestiali.
Lo scrittore li ritrae in brevi capitoli, piccole scene – domestiche o lavorative, di caccia, di ritrovo religioso o di svago – che hanno un’essenzialità potente di segno, come di acqueforti.
È la privazione della casa a operare, in una breve stagione di passaggio da fine estate a un gelido inverno nel paesaggio incantato e ostile delle montagne del Tennessee, la trasformazione di Ballard da reietto della società in un animale da preda, in un mostro, in un adepto della morte. La morte diviene per lui lo strumento di contatto, il primo e unico, con i suoi simili e con l’amore che non ha mai conosciuto; quasi la morte costituisse la sua sola opportunità di relazionarsi con gli altri “figli di Dio”.
La prosa di McCarthy, qui secca, livida e ieratica come ne “La strada”, trascende la semplice funzione originaria di strumento narrativo, facendosi protagonista insieme con i personaggi e gli elementi della natura, in un connubio tanto angosciante quanto perfetto che accompagna, come una straordinaria marcia funebre, il protagonista verso il suo unico possibile destino e verso la terribile e grottesca risoluzione della vicenda.

description

”Ogni foglia che gli sfiorava la faccia accresceva la sua tristezza e la sua paura. Ogni foglia che si lasciava dietro, non l’avrebbe vista mai più. Gli accarezzavano la faccia come veli, alcune già ingiallite, le venature come ossicini sottili che risaltavano in trasparenza quando il sole le attraversava. Aveva deciso di continuare il suo viaggio perché tornare indietro non poteva, e quel giorno il mondo era bello come lo era stato tutti i giorni fin dal principio, e lui viaggiava verso la morte.”
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Oct 10, 2012 Lou rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: re-read-list

There was two main reasons for re-reading this novel one was due to read William Gay's novel The provinces of night a name taken from the opening sentence of a chapter from this novel. The second reason was Donald Ray Pollock's recommendation to read this in a recent interview I had with him.
I am now convinced more that we have in our midst a living great writer. The first read of this and the Road I payed less attention to the prose in the story and the whole way it was presented, and due to th...more There was two main reasons for re-reading this novel one was due to read William Gay's novel The provinces of night a name taken from the opening sentence of a chapter from this novel. The second reason was Donald Ray Pollock's recommendation to read this in a recent interview I had with him.
I am now convinced more that we have in our midst a living great writer. The first read of this and the Road I payed less attention to the prose in the story and the whole way it was presented, and due to this it did not fare as well as it did now.

This story is the opposite to what the title may lead you to believe it is about, the main character is ungodly almost like he is a devilish entity creating havoc across the land.
McCarthy has crafted together a story successfully with master craftsmanship, containing a subject matter that is at times one of the most brutal and gruesome you would read of in a story.
This story reads like it was penned as a collaborative work by Jim Thompson and William Faulkner. Reminiscent of a recent good story with a similar darkness, the Devil all the time by Donald Ray Pollock.

The main protagonist is a an individual whose disturbed in someways a sociopath who does the unspeakable with the dead.
There are shocking moments repulsive and bizarre one place in the story he carry off a dead woman along with the squirrels he hunted to a resting place to partake in unspeakable acts.
He also has the murder of a child to his name there is yonder much toil, blood and darkness.
The author produces a story that's shockingly vivid and terrible in content but told in places in sentences with words in the right places.
Told by an author who can make the groutesque and terrible beautiful with his lyrical craftmanship.
The right length of novel that would stay for long in your mind either in shock or awe.

"To watch these things issuing from the otherwise mute pastoral morning is a man at the barn door. He is small, unclean, unshaven. He moves in the dry chaff among the dust and slats of sunlight with a constrained truculence. Saxon and Celtic bloods. A child of God much like yourself perhaps. Wasps pass in a through the laddered light from the barnslats in a succession of strobic moments, gold and trembling between black and black, like fireflies in the serried upper gloom."

"Among the pines on the ridge the sound of the
autioneer's voice echoed muted, redundant. An illusion of multiple voices, a ghost chorus among old ruins."

"Were there darker provinces of night he would have found them. Lying with his fingers plugged in the bores of his ears against the strident cheeping of the myriad black crickets with which he kept household in the barren cabin. One night on his pallet while half asleep he heard something scamper through the room and vault ghostly (he saw, struggling erect) through the open window. He sat there looking after it but it was gone. He could hear foxhounds in full cry, tortured wails and yelps nigh unto agony coming up the creek, up the valley. They flooded into the cabin yard in a pandemonium of soprano howls and crashing brush."

"Going up a track of a road through the quarry woods where all about lay enormous blocks and tablets of stone weathered gray and grown with deep green mots, toppled monoliths among the trees and vines like traces of an older race of man. This rainy summer day. He passed a dark lake of silent fade where the moss walls rose sheer and
plumb and a small blue bird sat slant upon a guywire in the void."

" He had that rifle from when he was just almost a boy. He worked for old man Whaley settln fenceposts at eight cents a post to buy it. Told me he quit midmornin right in the middle of the field the day he got enough money. I don't remember what he give for it but I think it come to over seven hundred posts.
Ill say one thing He could by god shoot it. Hit
anything he could see. I seen him shoot a spider out of a web in the top of a big redoak one time and we was far from the tree as from here to the road yonder. They run him off out at the fair one time. Wouldn't let him shoot no more."

"He would arrange her in different positions and go out and peer in the window at her. After a while he just sat holding her, his hands feeling her body under the new clothes. He undressed her very slowly, talking to her. Then he pulled off his trousers and lay next to her..."

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May 02, 2009 Melody rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: third-thursday-bookgroup

This is one of those books that, when you read it, and really like it, it makes you wonder if you should be worried about yourself.

I mean it’s kind of like finding something brown and wondering if it might be chocolate and tasting it and discovering that it really is something vile and disgusting. But then you should have known better. I mean you found the brown thing on the floor, so there was no way you REALLY could have been expecting chocolate and then, Oh look! There’s another something br...more

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Apr 10, 2009 Hannah Messler rated it 5 of 5 stars

I finished this book yesterday morning and then was an absolute emotional wreck for almost the whole rest of the day. I don't know if there's any connection or not (I also didn't eat the day before except a Greek yogurt, a rice pudding, and movie popcorn and also drank a shitload of Earl Grey AND stayed up too late AND saw Let the Right One In [which is exquisite:]), but oh my LORD. This is a book I will never recommend to my Mom, to say the freaken LEAST. Just utterly stunningly backbreakingly...more

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Dec 12, 2011 Diletta rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Lester Ballard non è proprio la personcina che più vorreste come vicino di casa.
No, non è proprio un simpatico omino. E non solo perché bestemmia e parla da solo, che già di per sé non è proprio carino, ma se siete in un'auto a farvi gli affaracci vostri con il vostro ragazzo lui vi sparerà alla nuca e violenterà il vostro cadavere ancora caldo, e questo forse è ancor meno carino.
Vi comprerà degli amabili vestiti rossi, vi nasconderà in una caverna e se tutto va bene andrà anche in giro con ind...more

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Jun 13, 2008 Red King rated it 4 of 5 stars

So I read your reply on YouTube on that Oprah video.

HI!!! cool u like Cormie too?

Absoultey not.

oh y not? :(

Why do you is a better question. I don't see how being a "souther writer" makes his books any good.

oh i also like his movies!

That was your first mistake.

hey! cmon dont be a dick!

Why not? I have one.

lol!

But seriously that's very dumb.

NO IT ISNT DONT BE A JERKOFF

This is just something you'll have to learn to accept in time I guess.

whatev..you have a weird name lol

Are you trying...more

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Oct 11, 2012 Con McVeety rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My favorite of the three Cormac McCarthy novels I've read, it's amazing how McCrarthy uses words so sparcely, yet what they create is not only greatly vivid, but you can smell the soil and rank cave, can hear the echoing rifle shots. When I was reading "Child of God" and when it turned to winter in the novel I swear to you that the temperature in my room droped twenty degrees, for I had chills in my bones and my teeth started to hurt.

James Franco is currently filming the movie adaptaion of thi...more

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Feb 11, 2008 Amy rated it 1 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 05, 2012 Zoe Irish rated it 5 of 5 stars

I can safely say that I have never read anything quite like Child of God. It was very well written, as is to be expected with McCarthy's works. The novel has very intense moments, and at times they can be hard to take. I have a deep disgust for the protagonist Lester Ballard, a character that has no discernible redeeming qualities. If the book were not so eloquently written with a style that is unique to McCarthy, I would have put the book away in a dark corner and kept it there. After finishing...more

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Oct 22, 2008 Dayna rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's not as clear of a narrative, like No Country, it's kind of like watching a train wreck in slow motion. The feeling of dread that builds throughout the book is excruciating - similar to the way I felt about Chigurh.

The writing style is very sparse - the descriptions of nature are poetic, in contrast to the ugliness of some of the action. I don't want to say too much about what happens, but it is truly shocking. The story starts out with the town auctioning off Lester Ballard's property - he...more

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Mar 03, 2013 Enrique rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, reviewed

Lester Ballard has got hisself a few issues. One, he ain't got no real home. Which ain't a good thing for a young single man in the east Tennessee mountains of Appalachia, where the winters is something fierce.

His first "home," if we can call it that, warnt nothin' more than an abandoned squatter's cabin used by hunters huntin' 'possum and squirrel. Two rooms. It was a good enough home for a guy like Lester while he had it, I suppose. A bit lonesome out there in the boonies where all the backwoo...more

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Jun 22, 2008 Tom Troutman rated it 4 of 5 stars

**Fun Fact** In 1986 Cormac McCarthy entered a South Bronx recording studio under the guise of MC Cormie Mac to record an album of battle rap tracks titled "The Rise of Cormmunism". The album was released to tepid reviews and the lackluster sales figures forced him to return to writing insanely awesome books.

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Dec 22, 2008 J.C. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

A very short novel (I couldn't put down) told in short scenes using very sparse sentences and dense language. a book that is both a bit confusing because of its minimalism and very disturbing because of the subject matter. The character of Lester Ballard is a much more disturbing character than that of Anton Chigur from No Country for Old Men. I think that since it is one of McCarthy's early novels, it doesn't have the gravitas as some of his other work. not as powerful as The Road and surely no...more

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Aug 21, 2012 Javier rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: prose

This can be a tough one to get through, but it in the end we're left not only slightly disturbed but in awe of the opera that took place. We see the reprehensible Lester Ballard, a man with nothing to cling on to but fleeting moments of depravity with the dead. Its easy to assign him status of depraved evildoer. Its easier to assign the townspeople with the guilt of the crimes, for cornering Ballard. He lashes out, left with nothing more than the clothes he wears. Some can feel a certain pity fo...more This can be a tough one to get through, but it in the end we're left not only slightly disturbed but in awe of the opera that took place. We see the reprehensible Lester Ballard, a man with nothing to cling on to but fleeting moments of depravity with the dead. Its easy to assign him status of depraved evildoer. Its easier to assign the townspeople with the guilt of the crimes, for cornering Ballard. He lashes out, left with nothing more than the clothes he wears. Some can feel a certain pity for him, but nothing excuses him from the crimes, and I think the author does his best to make sure there is no honor in a man like Ballard. But he points out also (from what I gathered) that the townsfolk possess no honor. The human circus we read about in the novel is awe inspiring. But we can't blame the citizens anymore than we can blame Lester for being the brute that he is. The blame is placed on a unsympathetic and uncompromising higher power.

The world the inhabitants of the book endures is a very brutal one. Their existence is harsh. There are very Gnostic undertones in this novel; the fact that we are pure souls trapped in a dying world. The window is left open for us to peer into the mundane but tragically comic life of Lester. From the onset of the novel, he goes from violent ne'er do well to a full fledged homicidal maniac. During the course of this transformation (or chrysalis, because he may have been destined to a life of depravity) we become aware that the townspeople cringes from the protagonist. The mundane nature of their pathetic existence is clear from the get go. But his lashing out steadily increases in nature until he finally submits to his unworldly lusts.

I think the vivid imagery in the book is its strongest feature. I recall one very surreal and haunting scene where a pack of feral canines break into Lester's lair, and as he retaliates and fights off the canines he appears to be just as pitiable as these starving creatures. McCarthy is known for his violent themes, but some scenes may have been a tad too much.

Who knows if this is a tale of grotesque, or a classic spin on the old Southern Gothic narrative, or something of a chance to divest oneself from evil by taking this evilness in, but I feel that this is quite a lyrical and poetic look into a man's all too human susceptibility to the evil around us. (less)

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Jul 27, 2009 Robert rated it 5 of 5 stars

Going into this book, I certainly didn't expect a light-hearted romp. Having previously read "The Road" and viewed the film adaption of "No Country for Old Men," I knew the kind of themes McCarthy liked to ponder over. But I also knew nothing about the particulars of this book before I opened it up. I have to admit that the degree of its bleakness came as a bit of a shock.*

All of the action takes place in Sevier County, Tennessee, a place I've traveled through many times. I even ever-so-briefly...more

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Oct 18, 2008 Penny rated it 5 of 5 stars

I am reading all Cormac McCarthy books. This particular book, Child of God, is full of crude behavior, psychopathic and necrophilic violence. It's a bit like Stephen King without the whimsey. I finished ten years ago reading all the S. King books that I wanted to read. I would say definitely McCarthy writes wholly about American men. There are few women in his books. As I open the cover to each in my selected series, I practically get a whiff of testosterone, blood and in-your-face agression. In...more

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Mar 26, 2008 Sue rated it 4 of 5 stars

"In the spring or warmer weather when the snow thaws in the woods the tracks of winter reappear on slender pedestals and the snow reveals in palimpsest old buried wanderings, struggles, scenes of death. Tales of winter brought to light again like time turned back upon itself."

I really don't even know what to say after finishing this book. I might be speechless. Throughout McCarthy's beautifully crafted novel, we accompany Lester Ballard, a horrifying and amoral anti-hero, on a gruesome journey i...more

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Oct 12, 2007 Ashley rated it 5 of 5 stars

You better watch your mouth, the boy said.
You want to make me?
You put down that rifle and I will.
Any time you feel froggy, jump, said Ballard.

While not the fatalistic, fantastic visual wonder that is Blood Meridian, Child of God also deserves acclaim for McCarthy's relentless vision. With these books, you come face-to-face with literature as a craft. To me, there seems nothing stream of conscious about them. McCarthy's works seem to be slowly and deliberately assembled. Relentlessly beautiful in...more You better watch your mouth, the boy said.
You want to make me?
You put down that rifle and I will.
Any time you feel froggy, jump, said Ballard.

While not the fatalistic, fantastic visual wonder that is Blood Meridian, Child of God also deserves acclaim for McCarthy's relentless vision. With these books, you come face-to-face with literature as a craft. To me, there seems nothing stream of conscious about them. McCarthy's works seem to be slowly and deliberately assembled. Relentlessly beautiful in their art and almost unbearable in their brutality.

This Child of God is Lester Ballard, a dry, humorless, sociopath preying upon the women of this Tennessee hill community, like a caricature of Ed Gein and the Son of Sam. He goes in and out of jail, in and out of caves, carries his rifle everywhere and is quite unforgettable

Turn around, Ballard said.
What are you goin do?
Just turn around and never mind.
I have to go to the bathroom, the girl said.
You don't need to worry about that, said Ballard
Turning her by the shoulder he laid the muzzle of the rifle at the base of her skull and fired.

McCarthy's descriptive powers make me feel as if the whole book was written while standing under a tree on a dark and rainy day, fully in turn with every drop of melting snow, cobweb, abandoned bullet casing and unearthed human bone in the county.

The road when he reached it was unmarked by any track at all. Ballard descended it and went on. It was almost noon and the sun was very bright on the snow and the snow shown with a myriad crystal incandescence. The shrouded road wound off before him almost lost among the trees and a stream ran beside the road, dark under bowers of ice, small glass-fanged caverns beneath tree roots where the water sucked unseen. In the frozen roadside weeds were coiled ribbons of frost, you'd never figure how they came to be. Ballard ate one as he went, the rifle on his shoulder, his feet enormous with snow where it clung to the sacks with which he'd wrapped them.

It's glorious crafting, fiction hewn out of the raw stuff of nature and the dark, primal side of humanity.
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Aug 13, 2008 Dona rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of McCarthy's gifts is that he, like almost no other writer, can make the reader (if he or she has the courage and honesty to continue reading) pity, sympathize or even empathize with the most deranged and disenfranchised of characters. Early in this book, certain short chapters are told from the perspective of an uncomfortable unnamed narrator who knew Lester Ballard growing up (much like the unnamed narrator in Faulkner's A Rose for Emily knew Emily Grierson). These narrators attempt to di...more

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Jun 30, 2009 Hollis rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction

Hmm, not sure what I thought of this one. I have enjoyed everything I have read by McCarthy so far but I'm not so enthusiastic about this one. I thought that it was gratuitously unpleasant and, unlike 'No Country for Old Men' where the violence has a kind of meaning, I didn't think there was any in this. I didn't feel any compassion or interest in the protagonist as he committed his various crimes: I wasn't interested in the story at all.

Obviously, this is just my view. It's still worth reading...more

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May 23, 2012 Gary rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2012

Having read the Border Trilogy books and The Road I love McCarthy's writing; the Border Trilogy books are amongst my favourite books ever. Child of God is much much darker with the main character, Lester Ballard, who is never going to win any popularity contests - unless there is one for rather anti-social necrophilic murderers. The writing is sparse but the descriptions and dialogue are vivid and despite our friend Lester being impossible to like on any level whatsoever I did reluctantly feel s...more

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Jul 01, 2011 Steve rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, horror

There's a lot of GR reviewers, who I really respect, rating this one higher. I came to C-O-G after a McCarthy reading blitz, and felt this was definitely one of his lesser novels. It's like he sat down and said "I'm going to write crazy, outrageous shit, and see what happens." And with McCarthy that will take you into some strange places. The result is enough to make a fan of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre sit down and shut-up. But take a step back and ask yourself: Can he do better? Well, yes he c...more

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Feb 11, 2013 Luke Padgett rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: in-the-library

McCarthy is the kind of writer that can hold a story, any story, based on his writing ability alone. His prose is tight, terse and snaps off the page as you read. Based on that alone any of his books are worth reading. Child of God is the deeply disturbing story of Lester Ballard, a back-woods man that steals, kills, rapes and murders. He is the NON-person that makes the backwoods of eastern Tennessee his home. Written when McCarthy was young, Child of God is not his best effort, but anything wr...more

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Jul 10, 2008 Max rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

i've heard a lot about him recently. what i love about him most of all as a writer who elucidates by shadow what is so often rationalised - beyond his relentless poetic stitch and his urgent economy - is his imagination. he stands near as alone (in my ignorance) with the velocity to create, not reflect, to construct out of nameless material with a touch finer than gathering snowflakes, and more permanent than a scroll of rock. both the words he uses and the emotions he evokes are hewn and refine...more

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May 15, 2013 Jeff rated it 3 of 5 stars

(AUDIO) I started listening to all of Cormac McCarthy's books. I had "read" the The Road a while ago and I had always wanted to read No Country for Old Men, so I figured I'd start at the beginning and read all of his works. I tried to read (listen to) his first bookd The Orchard Keeper, and maybe it was just the narrator, but it just didn't grab me. I had problems following the thread of the story, so I bailed.

I skipped Outer Dark and went on to this, his third book. I thought I wasn't going to...more

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About Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels in the Southern Gothic, western, and post-apocalyptic genres and has also written plays and screenplays. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road, and his 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

His earlier Blood M...more

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Books by Cormac McCarthy

All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

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“At one time in the world there were woods that no one owned” — 24 people liked it

“Old woods and deep. At one time in the world there were woods that no one owned and these were like them.” — 9 people liked it

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