Jeff's review
The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy
I recently summarized two Uncle Tupelo songs as condensed Cormac McCarthy novels. This novel is more like an expanded Silver Jews track ("Smith and Jones Forever," I'm looking in your direction).
There are a lot of descriptions of body odor in this book. Most everyone so far seems like the kind of old coot you encounter when you get to Fleet Farm a little too early on Saturday morning. Or maybe this is more like "American Graffiti" moved from Milwaukee to West Virginia. I'm just shy of 100 pages in and still trying to figure the damn thing out. It's really heavy on description, alliteration, and a kind of gnarly syntax that's hard to get used to, sort of like what I found when I first read "Rabbit Run," except moreso.
It's just McCarthy's first book, though. I have to hope those rough edges get knocked off the further I work my way in to his oeuvre.
N...more
There are a lot of descriptions of body odor in this book. Most everyone so far seems like the kind of old coot you encounter when you get to Fleet Farm a little too early on Saturday morning. Or maybe this is more like "American Graffiti" moved from Milwaukee to West Virginia. I'm just shy of 100 pages in and still trying to figure the damn thing out. It's really heavy on description, alliteration, and a kind of gnarly syntax that's hard to get used to, sort of like what I found when I first read "Rabbit Run," except moreso.
It's just McCarthy's first book, though. I have to hope those rough edges get knocked off the further I work my way in to his oeuvre.
N...more
