Outer Dark

Outer Dark

3.87 of 5 stars 3.87  ·  rating details  ·  5,281 ratings  ·  477 reviews
Outer Dark is a novel at once fabular and starkly evocative, set is an unspecified place in Appalachia, sometime around the turn of the century.A woman bears her brother's child, a boy; he leaves the baby in the woods and tells her he died of natural causes.Discovering her brother's lie, she sets forth alone to find her son.Both brother and sister wander separately throug...more
Paperback, 242 pages
Published June 29th 1993 by Vintage (first published 1968)
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Chris
This was my second Cormac McCarthy read, having initiated myself years ago with his more Faulkneresque rookie effort, The Orchard Keeper. I really enjoyed this one—grim, brooding, spectral atmosphere, replete with three harrowing strangers, seeping violence, who dog the steps of the fraternal half of our brother-sister protagonists. The book begins with sin, and this particular stain won't wash out, regardless of how far the brother, Culla, journeys through unnamed Appalachia in an attempt to sc...more
Craig
I'm not a fan of nonsense lyrical language nor am I a fan of incest cannibalist nihilism or lack of punctuation so this book is probably not the book for me.
Tom Troutman
Dear Mr McCarthy,

I write this as a formal apology. I feel a culpable shame to have only recently become cognizant of your mind stimuli prose infused writings. My discomfiture is only furthered by the thought that I almost dismissed my first purchase of your writings in the form of The Road due to the fact there was a sneering Oprah Book Club decal smacked on the hardcover. If the recommendation for the read had not come from such an infallible source Im afraid I would still be in ignorance of...more
Jeremy
This, much more so than the Orchard Keeper, feels like McCarthy's first full work. The narrative focus is much tighter, even if the journeys that Culla and Rinthy take are every bit as shiftless and as doomed. But by the end of the book, Mccarthy has stepped well beyond the typical southern Gothic territory he spends most of his first novel treading through. Outer Dark, with it's central incestuous conflict, could easily have been just another novel about screwed-up Appalachian degenerates. Inst...more
Marco Tamborrino
Sono tempi duri.
È la gente che rende duri i tempi. Ho visto tanta cattiveria fra gli uomini che non so perché Dio non ha ancora spento il sole e non se n'è andato.


Avendo letto prima altri romanzi di McCarthy, posso dire che - secondo me - questo è il meno riuscito. Lo scrittore deve ancora raggiungere la piena maturazione letteraria e sviluppare a pieno i suoi temi. Scrive sempre benissimo, non scade mai nel raccontato ma mostra tutto, la natura emana un potere proprio e la violenza è insita ne...more
Jim
Another harrowing slice of americana from McCarthy. Outer Dark is a disturbing story of a brother and sister with a terrible secret that tears apart their relationship and casts them both on separate journies through the angry lands of the rural south. The setting is gritty and hard -- a land where a person can't tell a preacher from a judge from a murderer --where the heat, swamps, and forgotten towns suck the souls from the characters. Misunderstood and often caught in situations beyond their...more
Jes
Not his greatest book, but still a good read. McCarthy describes setting in such vivid original terms that he could write a book about nothing and have my attention the whole way through. This book is allegory (I think), and I'm not quite sure yet what it's getting at. As usual, he writes the dialogue as if he'd spoken in the strange southern dialect all his life. McCarthy is extremely good at pulling off authenticity. I might read it again... but the "to read" pile is growing daily.
Matthew
All of the other reviews are too slavering, too worshipful, too fucking nerdy and self-referential to suggest that their authors actually read this book. I read about 15 of them, and not once did I see a comment, suggestion, reflection that added anything to my understanding of the text. Spare me the book reports. If you don't have anything to say, find a forum in which your lack of authority is expected: I suggest the rest of your life. Funny that I didn't see a single mention of its place in t...more
Amber
I enjoyed the book but it didn't "WOW" me. It didn't throw me into the world or give me any emotional turmoil over the characters. Overall it is nicely written but nothing special. The mystery wasn't very suspenseful. I felt disconnected from the characters. When an emotional event occurred, I didn't feel the appropriate pang of sadness or the ping of joy. The writing is done well and the descriptions are done beautifully but the story is lacking a connectivity that brings you close to the chara...more
Paola
Mi accosto sempre con un certo timore alle opere di CMC. Mi fanno paura. Perché lui de-scrive una non-umanità, il lato ombra, il nero di una fotografia.
Mentre i sentimenti, le emozioni le risveglia e le lascia tutte a te lettore. La pena, la pietas, l'amore, l'ansia, l'angoscia, la paura, il terrore che i protagonisti nemmeno sanno che cosa siano, perché sono impegnati a sopravvivere.
In questo romanzo una natura immensa e rigogliosa é spettatrice delle tristi, sordide, turpi, violente e meschin...more
John Leach
Of the books I've read by McCarthy, this had the most Southern Gothic feel to it. I could definitely see the influence by Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner.

Outer Dark is McCarthy's second novel. His early work, before Blood Meridian, was set in Tennessee--the state he grew up in. The setting here is the Appalachian mountains during the late 19th century.

A sister and brother undertake seperate surreal journeys from inner darkness to outer. She searches for her child, born of incest with he...more
Michael
A brother and sister have a baby and the man abandons it in the woods,they find out it was saved and begin a search for it.
It sounds simple but as ever in the strange world of mccarthy it soon gets very dark. with a mother desperate to find the boy and her brother getting into all sorts of trouble,it becomes a haunting masterpiece and with an ending set many years in the future it is also very emotional.
Jen
This book turned me into a Cormac McCarthy fan. While waiting for his newest book, The Road, to come available at the library, I read this earlier work of his. It was set somewhere in Appalacia, although the setting only matters to understand the terrian and the dialect in the book.

Once again, McCarthy is a master at character development, and while he doesn't lay everything out for you in a nice, neat package at the beginning, he tells you enough about the characters to keep you turning the pa...more
Arwen56
Praticamente si tratta di angoscia allo stato puro. Oddio, non che La strada o Non è un paese per vecchi possano essere definiti romanzi ameni. Tuttavia, rispetto a questo, potremmo persino affermare che una sia pur piccola vena di allegria ce l’hanno. Fate un po’ voi.
Ti

This story is about a brother, his sister and her baby which is left to die in the forest. The sister goes in search of the baby and her brother heads out after her to find her and bring her back. Along the way, they meet people from all walks of life..some kind, some not so kind. Once again, Cormac McCarthy paints a grim tale of human suffering. Although this is not the kind of book you enjoy reading, I find it staying with me as The Road did. There is one scene in the book that I felt could ha...more
Sp8b
This is another book set in Appalachia in the early part of the century. The plot, though, reads more like Greek mythology or something. You follow the two main characters as they make their way across a nightmare landscape and cross paths again and again with a murderous trio. I loved Mcarthy's ability to put you back in that time and his attention to detail. The plot is unsettling and very dark but, like the Orchard Keeper, doesn't have a traditional story arc. It does come to an end that kind...more
John
The only issue I take with "Outer Dark" is that the trio of men remain unexplained other than that they seem to murder anyone Culla comes across, including his deformed son. I'm not sure what McCarthy is trying to convey other than setting up a universe whose people are generous with food, casual with violence, and possess a adversarial relationship with nature. It is a quick read, maybe an afternoon or two, and was perfect to read out on the porch. Enjoyable but a little lacking on resolution....more
Jordi Via
Una pesadilla, el limbo, el juicio... Un rompecabezas
Carrie
I really enjoyed reading this. The story was very sparse, and of course, as with all Cormac McCarthy novels, prepare to be depressed. There ain't a one person who is nice to another in all the world, it seems, and this story is no different. He nailed the Appalachian dialect. Reading the dialogue was a real treat, and not cumbersome in the least.[return][return]The story was spare and Gothic, but I'm not sure what I mean by that. Other reviews have said it's a classic Western set in the Appalach...more
Sam L
Stylistically, McCarthy is probably one of my favorite English-language writers. Though obscure at times, his prose carries a biblical authority and bears a sense of the mythological that I find American literature otherwise lacks.

That said, the rotted support beam of McCarthy's writing is usually his content. I read Blood Meridian, and I read No Country for Old Men- I've read a lot of McCarthy staples in general. While beautifully written, and intelligently told, much of his work fails simpl...more
David
I’m glad there are still these early Cormac McCarthy’s I have still to get to. He’s never been the sort of writer that I want to chain-read. McCarthy’s second novel is pure Southern Gothic horror. Culla gets his sister Rinthy with child, hides her away in their backcountry Appalachian cabin until the babe is born in a welter of pain and blood, and then runs off stumbling and desperate through the night with the infant through the swamps and hollers to leave it out in the woods for some predator...more
Matt
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Luke
Astonishing. McCarthy's first, The Orchard Keeper, was very good, but it didn't crush me like his latter novels. Apparently his first book is the only one that fails to reach the highest levels of literary achievement; his second, Outer Dark, is a work of monstrous power. I began my mission to read all of his novels in the order they were written a few weeks ago, and I have not only seen McCarthy's skill go from impressive to staggering in only two books, but I have seen the seeds of his great w...more
Chloe
It's been said that for writer's first novels, it is inevitable that they wear their influences on their sleeves. This is certainly the case with Cormac McCarthy's second novel, Outer Dark. Steeped in the tradition of Southern Gothic writing, this story of wandering siblings perpetually on the wrong side of luck and fortune reads like a Faulknerian nightmare.

Rinthy Holme has no sooner given birth to her first child than its father, her brother Culla, hoping to rid himself of the incestuous offsp...more
Gil D.
"E' la gente dura che rende duri i tempi. Ho vista tanta cattiveria fra gli uomini che non so perchè Dio non ha ancora spento il sole e non se n'è andato."
Il tema è ancora e sempre la desolazione più cieca, nel mondo e negli uomini. E la disperata, irragionevole ostinazione del vivere. Nonostante, appunto, il buio fuori.
Avevo letto La Strada e qualcosa, nonostante la qualità, mi aveva infastidito. Qui meno "effetti speciali", un'eleganza più austera ed un ciglio più asciutto. Uno stile che è co...more
Mike
Outer Dark is not about nothingness. It's not just a wailing cry of hopelessness for the human race. It's about how darkness seems to manifest itself so easily in an inscrutable world, but goodness manages to manifest itself - also inscrutably - in the internal world. Yes, we do not have the motives of these three senseless men. But even our main character - without really being told verbatim that the meat he may be eating is human meat - feels an intense distaste of keeping it down. The mother...more
Mike
Outer Dark: Cormac McCarthy's Novel of Judgment and Responsibility

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And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Matthew 25:30, KJV

If there were ever a more unprofitable servant to appear in literature, it would be difficult to find one less so than Culla Holme. Brother to Rinthy, he has perpetrated the social taboo of incest. He fears his sin will be found out. When Rinthy's water breaks, he allows her to suffer through labor, refusing t...more
Ivy Kleinbart
If you've read McCarthy's The Road, this book is its cousin in many ways, but I liked it more. The writing consists of a luscious poetics that is virtuosic enough to endure provocative narrative elisions and ghastly scenes of social and domestic violence. The characterizations in this book build from flat pockets of dialogue and a heightened attention to the main characters' most basic and desperate machinations, which are often circular and repetitious; we never get a sense of their inner lives...more
Mark Sacha
McCarthy's second novel seems like a prototype for his entire body of work to follow, fully developed from the comparatively unperfected language of The Orchard Keeper, just three years earlier. As someone with a borderline reverence for his fiction, I will be the first to admit that it is thematically redundant. This could be construed as a problem for some, but I see it as self-justified. Although he is provincial in his characters and setting, the things he most frequently considers are measu...more
Shawn
I liked Outer Dark a lot, but it's not for everyone. I was arguing with someone that you could cross out the title and write The Road (McCarthy's recent, successful book--unlike this one, I guess, which was early, copyright 1968, and I'm guessing not that successful)on it, but they disagreed. Or, it's like Oh Brother Where Art Thou, but with more biblical references, and themes, some of which I'm sure I don't understand, not being myself a bible scholar. It's dark though. I read where McCarthy w...more
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Outer Dark (Paperback)
Outer Dark (Paperback)
Outer Dark (Paperback)
Il buio fuori  (Paperback)
Outer Dark (ebook)

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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
More about Cormac McCarthy...
The Road No Country for Old Men All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1) Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West The Crossing (The Border Trilogy, #2)

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“Ive seen the meanness of humans till I dont know why God aint put out the sun and gone away.” 28 people liked it
“Hard people make hard times. I've seen the meanness of humans till I don't know why god ain't put out the sun and gone away.” 6 people liked it
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