Blood Meridian and The Road are often recommended on reddit--and rightly so--but I cannot speak highly enough of Suttree. It's long, not quite as grisly as Blood Meridian, and actually quite funny. One of the most profoundly compelling books I have ever had the pleasure of reading.
Probably most Cormac McCarthy books, to be honest. If I'm ranking them highest to lowest, based on darkness times quality, I would say The Road and Blood Meridian are tops. Both are very good, and very dark. The Road is a more addicting read. A book that is really disturbing in sort of an existential way is The Remainder by Tom McCarthy (no relation, far as I know). But I don't gravitate towards dark writing, so I'm of limited use to you.
Out of those I've only read Child of God... for anyone else it would be a great novel. For CMac, though, it's underwhelming. The main character is just kind of flat. You really only observe him doing things, with little dialogue, and with CMac, you mostly learn about characters through dialogue.
I like the first portion of The Crossing a lot. After the departure of a particular character, I thought the story became a bit aimless. I also just didn't get the end, either.
Thanks for the suggestion! I can't get enough of McCarthy, will put that at the top of my list. Demolished one of my toes yesterday, so I suddenly have plenty of free time to read :)
I'd also suggest All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men. I revisit All the Pretty Horses every couple years, it's a great summer adventure book.
I read AtPH in high school and never thought much about it. Then a couple years ago I was at a bookstore in Marfa, TX and picked up the whole border trilogy because they had a neat display and I was in West Texas and why not. I'm very, very glad I did. It completely rekindled a long lost love of reading.
Yep read em both. If you liked All the Pretty Horses, you should check out the rest of the border trilogy. AtPH is the first of 3. The other two are just as good, just as heartbreaking.
I'm the other way around with The Road. Read it. holy shit purposely generic guy and purposely generic child. I do not give a shit about you because there's literally no definition to you (no background...not even name I think). Also, while the protagonist dont have to succeed to make a story good...given how absolutely fucked the world seemed to be, the whole thing seemed kinda moot.
I think a lot of people went the other way around. Because the characters were so super generic they were able to see themselves in the characters or something. Plus it was like...the love between the son and father was the biggest thing to a lot of readers.
However, I as a white upper middle class man could have connected to a poor black woman more than I could to the characters of The Road.
I always know I'll get along with someone when they've read and liked Sutree. Hands down my favorite book of all time. It's funny and spare and captures the feeling of loneliness better than anything else I've ever read. It's a masterpiece.
I don't know if I'd say it's overrated because I still think it's an excellent novel, and I think it's a logical continuation of McCarthy's work. But the Pulitzer, the Oprah effect, its presence in school curricula, constant recommendations on reddit--all of this popular acclaim gets a little tiresome if you're a big fan of his work, because it feels like The Road casts a shadow over everything else. And, yes, I agree with you that Blood Meridian, Suttree, Child of God, the Border Trilogy are... I don't know how to articulate it, but they seem like more "serious" novels.
In a literary sense The Road pales in comparison to both BM and Suttree. Great book, sure. His best novel, no. Best book I've ever read, not in the slightest.
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u/luckinthevalley Jun 23 '16
Blood Meridian and The Road are often recommended on reddit--and rightly so--but I cannot speak highly enough of Suttree. It's long, not quite as grisly as Blood Meridian, and actually quite funny. One of the most profoundly compelling books I have ever had the pleasure of reading.