I had given The Road, a post apocalyptic novel by Cormac Mc Carthy to a friend of mine. When he gave it it back he said : it is sooo dark... After climate change a father and son walk through scorched America. The only thing moving are the ashes and the people looking for food. Violence and unerring humanity. It is shocking yet beautiful. So off to the bookshop I went and got myself All the pretty horses the first book of the Border trilogy. I am floored by the language, the precise terms for types of soil, potholes and other standing water, but also life and death, love and notwithstanding pain some men live by their own rather masculine honor code. He tells a grand and epic story, expressed in even grander landscapes reflecting the mental states of some of the protagonists. Pain, love, loyalty. My love of language made me circle the words I had never read before... quiet a few gems are to be found on each page. And yes the story of young men, kids almost and the trials and tribulations of first love... In a way this is a unique coming of age novel. I had read before Child of God, for me this was the hardest to read: the degradation, the grotesque, killing and preying upon people in normal situations like chance encounters in the woods, in stores. The images of East Tennessee show the depressed area and the de-posessed... Yet I go on reading mesmerized by the dignity of some, the touch of humor and the strength and mesmerizing beauty of his language. Mc Carthy shows the worst of a human being yet elicits compassion.
Outer dark begins with the birth of a child from the incestuous union between a brother and a sister. The brother takes away the child and she won't stop looking for it in the wild Appalachian lands around the turn of the century. Moving and chilling is this wandering to find a child. three strangers turn it into an apocalypse... It is quiet a read bringing redemption n a strange way as a kind of parable.
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