Top Ten Reasons to Not Allow Your 12-Year Old to Have Unrestricted Internet Access—Child of God by Cormac McCarthy

I’m not a big fan of books. I already talked about this in a blog post, but with my attention span, it’s extremely difficult to find a book I’ll actually read and enjoy. 

Typically the first book someone would read in ADHD attention span recovery would be short, simple, and plot-driven. So naturally, when I asked my dad for help, he recommended Blood Meridian. 

What the hell, right? What kind of psycho tries to throw a 12-year-old girl with attention deficit disorder directly into a 370-page-book about Manifest Destiny and expects everything to turn out fine? Crazy. 

Yeah, instead I turned my attention to a much simpler read—McCarthy’s Child of God, a critically praised novel about an Appalachian serial killer, filled cover to cover with graphic perversion, violence, murder, and (trigger warning?) necrophilia. 

Sounds a lot worse, right?

Now that I’ve read Blood Meridian, I can confirm that Child of God was, in fact, a lot worse. That book was disgusting. I hated it. I loved it. I had to take three showers after reading it, and my stomach was still churning. To this day, Child of God is probably the most grotesque, violent, beautiful, and fulfilling book I’ve ever read, from the first sentence to the ending—which I won’t spoil, but it comes full-circle in a way that I couldn’t put into words even if I tried. 

The main point of this post was to just tell that story, but there are two things I need to talk about. Two-ish. Whatever. Anyways. 

When I read the first sentence of Child of God, I had to pause. The plot of the story hadn’t even begun. No characters had been truly introduced. But the writing of that sentence made me stop.

Before I start, I’m not one of those freaks who regularly admires the structure of writing itself instead of the contents (sorry Mr. Mitchell). Anyways, page one of the book describes a caravan of people on wagons. In one sentence, McCarthy smoothly “zooms in” to the caravan, painting a picture that brings the reader from the full caravan, to one cart, to one man, to one face. I have no idea how to make that sound as cool as it actually is without recommending the book (something I am not going to do. I don’t need any therapists told on me). Maybe I’m just really lame. But from that first sentence, I was absorbed into this book. 

Second thing. Cormac McCarthy, as far as I know, does not use quotation marks. This pissed me off at first. 

Ten-ish McCarthy books later, I think his lack of proper punctuation is one of the reasons I love his writing. I don’t know how to describe it, but the informality brings the reader into the book. Removing the quotation marks somehow makes McCarthy’s characterization even more insanely immersive. I’m not even talking about the character profiles or lore or whatever—I mean the accents and manner of speaking, from Appalachian murderers to pedophile Satan judges on the Western border, are genuinely so enhanced by the “copy editor’s fever dream” style punctuation. 

That’s it. I needed to ramble. If I tried to talking about any plot-driven elements or summaries/analyses of any of Cormac’s books, this post would be sixty pages long.

I think an analysis would have been a better blog topic. I’m fascinated by Cormac’s works of writing, of course, but there’s only one thing that’s fascinated me more than his literature since I was twelve years old and reading a beautiful, life-changing book about gratuitous violence and fate—and that’s his writing itself. 

Thanks :)

Oona