Name: The Outer Dark
ISBN: 9780330314923

Cormac McCarthy

The Outer Dark

A grim tale and world with occasional moments of comedy, but possibly the bleakest book I've read. Our world is an uncaring one and will likely remain that way for some time.

I was worried going into this one that it'd be boring; I read the description and from the sounds of things, it was going to be a brother and sister wandering the forest while they're pursued. How much could really happen?

Thankfully, I was very wrong. Both Culla and Rinthy Holme find plenty of interesting scenes on their journey to find their lost baby of incest. McCarthy had said it directly elsewhere, but a book like this makes it incredibly obvious that he finds human sorrow to be a thing of power. Beauty in tragedy after tragedy.

Despite being his second book, McCarthy is already rampantly beautiful here in his passages. The reader can easily see this man's voice was something special right from the first page, where Culla's nightmare is described in dark detail, easily conjuring a short, near-Biblical film in one's mind. His expressions, similes, and esoteric word choices are phenomenal from the get-go all the way to the end. A book about illiterates by a man who seems to effortlessly dance with the English language, preferring a sector of American tongues not very popular in literature.

I highly recommend "Outer Dark". If you're sensitive or not in a great space mentally, perhaps this book needs a rain check for a later date; but if you love books, I don't see how you can pass this one up.

Evan

A grim tale and world with occasional moments of comedy, but possibly the bleakest book I've read. Our world is an uncaring one and will likely remain that way for some time.

  

I was worried going into this one that it'd be boring; I read the description and from the sounds of things, it was going to be a brother and sister wandering the forest while they're pursued. How much could really happen?

Thankfully, I was very wrong. Both Culla and Rinthy Holme find plenty of interesting scenes on their journey to find their lost baby of incest. McCarthy had said it directly elsewhere, but a book like this makes it incredibly obvious that he finds human sorrow to be a thing of power. Beauty in tragedy after tragedy.

  

Despite being his second book, McCarthy is already rampantly beautiful here in his passages. The reader can easily see this man's voice was something special right from the first page, where Culla's nightmare is described in dark detail, easily conjuring a short, near-Biblical film in one's mind. His expressions, similes, and esoteric word choices are phenomenal from the get-go all the way to the end. A book about illiterates by a man who seems to effortlessly dance with the English language, preferring a sector of American tongues not very popular in literature.

  

I highly recommend "Outer Dark". If you're sensitive or not in a great space mentally, perhaps this book needs a rain check for a later date; but if you love books, I don't see how you can pass this one up.

kind of amazing how someone with such an incredible command of the English language can write such a boring book 

Grace M

I had a lot to say about it then I heard about his little 16 year old girlfriend now i dont really care it was good though

gabrielle v

Patrick Book

A big shift from his first novel! Well-conceived and stylized and, of course, grim as hell.

Outer Dark is a novel at once fabular and starkly evocative, set is an unspecified place in Appalachia, sometime around the turn of the century. A woman bears her brother's child, a boy; he leaves the baby in the woods and tells her he died of natural causes. Discovering her brother's lie, she sets forth alone to find her son. Both brother and sister wander separately through a countryside being scourged by three terrifying and elusive strangers, headlong toward an eerie, apocalyptic resolution.

Outer Dark

Tobias V. Langhoff

Another dark book from McCarthy about people who unhappily roam the Southern US. An incestuous relationship in the redneck Appalachian country sends two illiterate siblings on separate journeys to find what they have lost. Their karma decides their fate along the way.

The first audiobook I’ve heard by Ed Sala, and to my untrained ears he really nails the dialect.

Coleman McCormick

Outer Dark sorta makes the other McCarthy books I've read look like happy time (The Road, No Country). Though there are few characters and little activity, McCarthy keeps the suspense up through to the end.

Just an exquisite book. The beginning is tremendously atmospheric. The characters are intentionally underspoken throughout the novel which forces the reader to rely on the impact of their presence which Cormac did an excellent job on capturing in such a captivating way. The story is clever and original. My only qualm is that the middle of the book can be a drag. The end is near perfect and wonderfully poetic 

Blazgorb Throxis

Michael Springer

There were some elements of this book I liked quite a bit. The characters stumble through a dangerous world peopled by eccentrics who are, often as not, dangerous. The book builds to a surprising and dark conclusion that, in my opinion, disappointed. 

I really enjoy the work of this author. But, this is an earlier and weaker offering than what I've read by him before.

Celia Adams

Cormac McCarthy reads like my pretentious English professor acts- like he thinks he so smart and better than everyone else just because he doesn't follow pop culture and used ambiguity and no context. I'd give him no stars if that was an option

Outer dark

Alys

Alithea

Kutalp (Kutalp)

Jackson Weaver

A. D. Knapp

Zsofia Müller 

elizabeth

A man tells his sister that the child she bore him is dead, but learning it is alive, she searches the woods for her lost son