Outer Dark

Great book but soooo depressing

As McCarthy's books seem to be, depressing as all heck. This book was a page turner, I am glad I read it but it left me with such a feeling of dispair. The book's dialect was hard to read at first but once you get the hang of it the pages turn faster and faster. End result is a excellent book but again, it is not a hopeful or peaceful happy book. It is typical McCarthy. But again, I keep thinking about this book though I read it a month ago. Which would tell me it was worth the read and worth the price of the book. Just put these books in the middle of the good books with happy endings so you don't totally depress yourself. I recommend this book because after reading one will be THANKFUL for what they have and THANKFUL they did not grow up with the same issues.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

A milk-soaked yarn of wandering nightmare

McCarthy gets flack for description, but this is a novel of 'outer' landscapes. It is refreshing, at least for me, to read a novel that isn't consumed with psychological realism, and that is more concerned with painting a landscape and fully peopling it. Imagine a handful of Chaucer's pilgrims gone mad--if they weren't already--and lost in Appalachia. Then, throw in a trio of ravaging maniacs who roam the wilds and threaten all in their path. The book's story-arc is straight-forward and easy to follow. There are no flashbacks here, probably because, as Culla and Rinthy continually tell us, there is nothing to flashback to. A very enjoyable and quick read that serves as a precursor, in theme, imagery, and character, to Blood Meridian.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

The man's a by-God spellbinder

OK, I've read a lot of McCarthy now (finished Outer Dark yesterday), and I've honestly concluded that there's not as much to this author as most people think. His excitement value is high, his literary value rather spurious at best. His books are amazing and spellbinding in terms of their sentences and their scenes. Their plots are gripping--page-turners, even. But in terms of the grand, Christian parallels and world views they try to evoke, I feel they come off largely hollow and desultory. At best, they are very generalized illustrations of certain Christian ideas (the world as a place of evil, for instance). Some have commented that his characters are not ever fully developed. I believe this is true and that it owes largely to their being used in his project of illustrating and exploring grand ideas in his fiction. Furthermore, I think his amount of description is excessive, often to the point of frustration. It's GOOD description, I'll grant you, but Lord, so much! Perhaps a third of all of his books involve a character or group of characters walking somewhere, while the narrator describes everything he/she/they see. This landscape is artificially described by this removed narrator in terms that help it add to the sense of evil, darkness, or whatever else McCarthy is trying to describe in the book. The landscape means nothing to the characters themselves. This seems to me a rather convenient and facile move on McCarthy's part. You really FEEL the fiction here. 'I'm literature!' it screams. I believe that if a reader honestly pins down WHY he or she likes this author, he/she will have to admit it has to do mostly with plot and suspense. There's just a big thrill factor here. And to me this is rather unsettling. If you are going to read McCarthy, I say, read his new book, The Road, and save the rest of your reading time for someone else.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

I thought I missed a chapter or two.

This book is as bad as THE ROAD is good.

Beautiful Poetic Prose by McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy's Outer Dark is a beautiful, yet chilling novel. This haunting tale of two outsiders wandering the woods, one searching for her child and the other searching for his sister, hooked me from the first sentence. A gorgeous novel that is so much more than a 'western.'

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