If you loved McCarthy’s writing in All the Pretty Horses, well, you won’t encounter it here. This is less a novel and more of a scientific, philosophical thought experiment put to paper. Buoyed by only the scarcest of plotlines we follow the wonderings of main character Bobby Western, an increasingly paranoid salvage diver plagued by a familial guilt over his father’s central role in the creation of the atom bomb. The Bobby chapters are interspersed with italicized encounters between Bobby’s sister and an hallucinatory array of mishapen, circus-like characters. Unfortunately, the conversations are so non-sensical that I skimmed through them after their third appearance. In Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing he advises writers to “try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” McCarthy fails to heed any such advice and stocks this novel full of skippable pages.
To top it all off, there’s a weird quasi-incestual relationship implied between Bobby Western and his decade younger sister. From what I could tell, it doesn’t represent anything–it’s not a metaphor for some lofty idea–it’s just weird and sick and makes me question McCarthy all together.
Of course, I’m just a clanging cymbal since the novel continues to receive accolades from most critics. Reader beware.
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Key Quotes:
69 I knew that freedom was just lke it says in speeches. It's worth whaetever you have to pay to get it.
93 Tugs don't break up. Tugs are forever.
137 Coming upon a certain book in the library and clutching it to you. Carrying it home. Some perfect place to to read it. Under a tree perhaps...And of course it's true that any number of these books were penned in lieu of burning down the world--which was the author's true desire.
141 What a man seeks is beauty, plain and simple. No other way to put it. The rustle of her clothes, her scent. The sweep of her hair across his naked stomach.
143 Having read even a few dozen books in common is a force more binding than blood.
180 Beauty makes promises that beauty can't keep.
