Delapidated and ignoble to the point of beauty ( )

Reviewed by Mr. Overeem (Language Arts)
The title character is a grown-up Huck Finn, out of territory, and returned to southern mid-America--lto live in a ramshackle houseboat on the Tennessee River outside of Knoxville, to be exact. The Huck Finn echoes are reinforced by the unforgettable teenager Gene Harrowgate, one of the best comic inventions in recent American lit history. Indeed, McCarthy has crafted an epic where the participants are decidedly unromanticized no-future derelicts, and while the effect is often funny in a way you might never have imagined this author capable of being, it's just as often poetically and profoundly sad, as much as any novel I've ever read. A half-step away from the scintillating hell-fired prose of BLOOD MERIDIAN--kids, if you want a book that will build your vocabulary or else cause you "skullpangs," as McCarthy would put it, give this a try. ( )

Rich and decadent prose that has awakened me to the Southern Gothic genre. Probably not for everyone, but for those that enjoy a darker, more manly(?) Faulknerian style, it is a feast. ( )

McCarthy is a master craftsman. This is a slice of Southern Gothic told in an arcane biblical language (there were a lot of words I didn't know). He conjures up a Southern City (knoxville) as hell and describes its denizens with humour.
Never having read any Faulkner I can't be sure but I suspect it owes a lot to that writer. ( )

http://sarahbbc.wordpress.com/2009/01... ( )