Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy is a dark and haunting tale set in rural Appalachia, following the story of a brother, Culla, and his sister, Rinthy. The plot revolves around the disturbing events of incest, abandonment, and the search for a lost baby. Throughout their journeys, the siblings encounter various characters, both kind and cruel, as they navigate a bleak and unforgiving world. The writing style of McCarthy is described as beautifully expressive, with haunting prose that effectively captures the brutality and beauty of the characters and their surroundings.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Content warnings for Outer Dark include themes of incest, abandonment, violence, and references to infanticide, making it a profoundly disturbing read.
From The Publisher:
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.
Ratings (17)
Incredible (3) | |
Loved It (6) | |
Liked It (4) | |
It Was OK (2) | |
Did Not Like (2) |
Reader Stats (49):
Read It (19) | |
Currently Reading (1) | |
Want To Read (22) | |
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1 comment(s)
This. Is. Bleak. Are you looking for an uplifting story of love conquering all? Look away! Avert your tender eyes, because this is a heavily Faulkner-inspired style crossed with the most depressing parts of McCarthy's later work,
The Road.
This is McCarthy's second novel, and apparently he won a Faulkner award for his first novel. I can tell that he hasn't settled into his own style yet, because this southern Gothic has Faulkner written all over it. The sentences give you just enough to keep you going, but not quite enough that you know exactly what's going on if you aren't reading closely. There are levels of poverty, but no comfort; families, but no familial love; towns, but no true safety in numbers. Rinthy and Culla (the brother and sister protagonists) are on separate physical trajectories, but they seem to be walking in circles, always crossing before and behind each other and never really getting anywhere. The three mysterious outlaws are traveling in the same mysterious circle, a violent, wicked undercurrent for the facade of civilization Rinthy and Culla inhabit. The plot is never pinpointed in time or space; it seems to be late nineteenth century American south. That's because the when and where aren't the point; this isn't a tale of a specific time in American history, but of a specific type of American misery.
This book is downright creepy without being an actual horror novel (or maybe some would say it is). Don't read it if you're depressed.
What can you read after
Outer Dark?
About the Author:
Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist, screenwriter, and playwright who has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. A number of his works have been adapted into films, including All the Pretty…
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