
"Two thick ropes of dark blood and two slender rose like snakes from the stump of his neck and arched hissing into the fire. The head rolled to the left and came to rest at the ex priests feet where it lay aghast...The fire steamed and blackened and a gray cloud of smoke rose and the columnar arches of blood slowly subsided until the neck bubbled gently like a stew and then that too was stilled. He was sat as before save headless, drenched in blood, the cigarillo still between his fingers, leaning toward the dark and soaking grotto in the flames where his life had gone."
By any standards that is a superb piece of descriptive writing, however gruesome the subject matter. But that doesn't make up for a lack in the novel of any sense of progression. By the umpteenth grotesque death incident, I was a little tired of these macabre peaks in the storyline that appeared to be its only form of dramatic incident. I wasn't the least bit interested in persevering with it any further than the 122 pages of its 337 pages.
I guess this says as much about me, and my expectations of a novel, as it does about Cormac McCarthy. Previously I've not found myself unable to surrender to a books mood ,to be swept along by the invention and thrust of its prose. Though I have to say, I do have less tolerance for fiction in general these days. This is especially so if novelists are too knowingly clever by half, or who tease and test my patience. I'm increasingly less impressed by innovative, boundary breaking narratives that take you nowhere, and literary stylists, well they'll be the death of me. What is so gripping about pages of incorrectly punctuated prose and dialogue all muddled up? What does a novel gain from this charade? James Joyce has a lot to answer for. The fact that I've abandoned 'Blood Meridian' for CJ Samson's new Shardlake novel 'Revelation' speaks volumes. Give me a richly detailed historical murder mystery/detective novel any day, than something that's been critically lauded. Perhaps its symptomatic of my age that I value more the tried and trusted verities of fiction- vividly written, believable characters, with an interesting absorbing storyline brilliantly executed. Pulitzer Prize winner he may be, but Cormac McCarthy left me out in a rather 'bloody' cold.
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