Child of God

Cormac McCarthy third novel, stained in the dark ink of Faulkner and Conrad, and set in rural Tennessee, tells the story of an unsavory loner named Lester Ballard, a murderer and necrophilic. As disturbing as these qualities are, what is perhaps even more unsettling is how McCarthy draws us into Ballard's mind, seeping us in his craven soul, and forcing us to see him with sympathy as another one of God's children. After his family farm is auctioned off, Lester lives in an abandoned shack, haunting the fringes of society like an animal, but, like Frankenstein's creature, his attempts at making human contact are rebuffed, until he finally descends into a maze of mountainous caves, a physical parallel to his brutal descent into violence and madness. Though the content of the story is horrifying, McCarthy's prose is lyrical, lapidary, and transcendent, creating an uncanny disharmony with the details of Lester's life.