Child of God

Written by Cormac McCarthy

Narrated by Tom Stechschulte

From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road

In this taut, chilling story, Lester Ballard—a violent, dispossessed man falsely accused of rape—haunts the hill country of East Tennessee when he is released from jail.

While telling his story, Cormac McCarthy depicts the most sordid aspects of life with dignity, humor, and characteristic lyrical brilliance.

“Like the novelists he admires—Melville, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner—Cormac McCarthy has created an imaginative oeuvre greater and deeper than any single book. Such writers wrestle with the gods themselves.”—Washington Post

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781470337575

Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy was the author of many acclaimed novels, including Blood Meridian, Child of God and The Passenger. Among his honours are the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His works adapted to film include All the Pretty Horses, The Road and No Country for Old Men – the latter film receiving four Academy Awards, including the award for Best Picture. McCarthy died in 2023 in Santa Fe, NM at the age of 89.

Reviews for Child of God

[bibleblaster · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A chilling look at an isolated, disrespected man who descends into murder and necrophilia. That said, I find it oddly more compassionate and less reactionary than McCarthy's most recent novels (The Road, No Country for Old Men). McCarthy's brilliance at capturing setting with a few well-chosen details, and his skill at reproducing realistic dialogue are on full display here. Not an easy read, but a rewarding one: where does evil come from? Aren't we all "children of God"?

[Danielle Whitney · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Plot: A man named Lester Ballard is falsely accused of rape, and after he is released from prison, goes up into the hill country of East Tennessee. It is not long before he embarks upon a crime spree that will continue as long as he is free.

Genre: Literary fiction, gothic fiction, horror, psychological fiction.

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Thoughts While Reading:
Thoughts at 100%:
Positives:
+ The setting of the story was a much a character as Ballard was. I could almost feel the trees and snow. Cormac McCarthy was able to evoke the feeling of the hill country of Tennessee (since I've never been there, I'll take his word for it) incredibly well.
+ Having such a despicable main character and living only in his mind, whilst walking the line of keeping the book readable was balanced perfectly.
+ The pacing was great. I don't normally love short stories/novellas, but this one was really good.
+ Child of God was written so well, and so descriptively (without being over the top), that I almost felt like I was watching a movie in my mind while listening to the audiobook.

Negatives:
- Ballard was disgusting. I hated the way he treated woman (aside even from the necrophilia and murdering), and he seemed to have no morals whatsoever.
- The constant use of the n word was a bit much for me. It made me cringe every single time, I really hated it.
- Whilst listening to this book, I felt a near-constant sense of nausea from the sheer grossness of the main character.

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Conclusion and Recommendation:
I don't normally rate short stories/novellas very high, but with Child of God, Cormac McCarthy was able to tell a full story within the constraints of the shorter length, and it did not feel like it needed to be longer. Despite the negatives that I described above, Child of God was incredibly well written, and very evocative of the time and place in which the story was set. I have seen the movie of No Country for Old Men, but never read one of Cormac McCarthy's books before now, and after reading this one I'm definitely going to see what else I can get my hands on.
Child of God is not for the faint of heart. I would only recommend this to those who can cope with violence, necrophilia, explicit language, etc. Still, if you are ok with those things, this is a novella worth reading/listening to.

[grebmops_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Exhausting read. Excellent portrayal of moral degradation and alienation. Spare, taut, strong prose, as usual by McCarthy. But it's a hard read. The type of involvement here is purely intellectual, as it's almost impossible to empathize (even though McCarthy portrays him rather sympathetically) with Lester Ballard, a murderous necrophile. The narrative is detached from him so we're left wondering as to his motivation, trying to make sense in our minds of this character. There's not even a sense that he's evil - he almost can't help it, you see him as part of the environment: such a flat character with no depth at all.Which is not a problem, this is what the book's about. Just don't expect to understand the character as one would in John Fowles' The Collector, which covers some similar ground.

[toobusyreading · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There is no doubt that McCarthy can write, and write incredibly well. However, for me, this story was just too dark and too cruel. I was glad it was short, was glad to be done with it. Yes, I know that darkness is a hallmark of McCarthy, but I can still love some of his writing, especially The Road.Ballard was not a nice man even before he lost his home and began living in the woods, but he devolved into a complete animal -well, not true; that doesn't give enough credit to animals. His predilections became perverse and painful to read, but still, there was for me, a disconnect with his victims. The cruelty in the book was overwhelming, and there were some very disturbing animal cruelty scenes as well.The ending was something of a letdown. It felt hurried and anticlimactic. But then again, I was just glad the book was done.I listened to an unabridged audio version, and the narrator was excellent.

[michael8xolotl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Bleak without abatement, lushly beautiful without flaws.

[dchaikin_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

12. Child of God by Cormac McCarthy (1973, 197 page trade paperback, Read Feb 10-13)Holy necrophilia. Mentally off and completely unsocial, Lester Ballard loses his land and carries on alone in a filthy abandoned house. He is full of desires, partly influenced by his habit of stumbling upon lovers in their cars, but he is unable to understand them. And then things just seem to take on a logic of their own. And there is a logic to it.I enjoyed reading this, but it bothers me now thinking about it. It's funny and I think McCarthy was having fun. I imagine him not taking himself very seriously, other than working over the writing craft itself. I think he was poking fun at society by seeing how this creature would make his way in it. And I suspect he was intentionally trying to disturb and provoke his readers.I don't think this is the one McCarthy book anyone should read, but if necrophilia and a few other rancid things don't turn you off, it's a fun book of an odd sort.

[hagelstein_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lester Ballard has lost his property and home to the county and is forced to live in the woods and survive on his own. He becomes a purveyor of violence. Falsely accused of rape, Lester is released and proceeds to do worse, much worse. He’s a tortured soul, but “given charge Ballard would have made things more orderly in in the woods and in men’s souls.”Cormac McCarthy writes about nature and violence with opposite approaches and a skill matched by few others. His descriptions of nature and the rural environ of East Tennessee serve to bring the setting to life. As descriptive as his world is, the violence that tears into it is short, sharp, matter of fact, and sometimes twisted. It is also economically doled out to intensify the impact on the story. His way with dialogue and succinct descriptions of people add up to a thoroughly satisfying novel.William Gay picked up on McCarthy’s style and ran with it on his own, but McCarthy really has few peers.

[jamesmscott-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Lester Ballard, "a figure of wretched arrogance", is displayed here in all his rot and ruin. His hunger for depravity seems aptly set in the damp and cave-pocked humps and hollows of East Tennessee. This is an early work of McCarthy, and while his prose is like good bonded whiskey, it's not enough, in this case, to soften the raw, incessant acts of a character born seemingly from the gates of hell.

[stahl2ricco · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“I don’t know. They say he never was right after his daddy killed hisself.”Lester Ballard. “-a violent, dispossessed man who haunts the hill country of East Tennessee.” And then he finds the dead girl. Shudder. The book takes a pretty dark turn from there. Definitely not for the faint of heart!Despite the awfulness of Ballard's actions, I found the book nearly impossible to put down! The writing, the style, and the format just kept be engrossed. And 'gross' is an apropos word. I must say again, this book gets pretty nasty and disgusting. Fair warning.

[sarahebear · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Child of God" by Cormac McCarthy. Lester Ballard is a simple minded, country man, with limited intelligence, an over-abundance of rat cunning and a psychopathic violent streak. With his florid descriptions McCarthy allows the reader to see into the mind - what limited functioning there is -  of this unlikeable individual. What is most frightening is the absence of any real emotion (other than anger) or empathy for or understanding of others. Powerful and disturbing.

[stillatim · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In McCarthy's first two works, he gave us a world of more or less decent people, and then inserted some act of violence and/or evil into it: a murder, then incest and cannibalism. This book is one step closer to the astonishing transformation of Blood Meridian a in which we're given a world of more or less barbarous people, and then we just watch it all break down, over and over again, and we're left with only a faint glimmer of hope. In other words, rather than a good world in which we find some evil, we're given an evil world and find, unexpectedly, some good: a book, or a savior. Child of God is really a nice balance between those two. It's pretty grim, but it's grim at an individual level: here's what an evil world can do to a man with a sense of justice and beauty, but no way to deal with his own senses.

[jonez-6 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3.5

"'You think people was meaner then than they are now? the deputy said.

The old man was looking out at the flooded town. No, he said. I don't. I think people are the same from the day God first made one."'

[bibliosk8er_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I told myself I was done with Cormac McCarthy after reading No Country for Old Men. First I declared publicly that I couldn’t finish that book — that it was just too depressing. Then last week I went on a road trip and did, in fact, finish that book. It was depressingly good. Meaning that while it was depressing it was also hard to put down.

Then I declared, also publicly, that that was it. No more depressing McCarthy. But as I was reading some commentaries about No Country for Old Men, I started reading about one of his earlier novels, Child of God.

Now, you know I can’t turn down a really well written novel about depravity. Also, I’m attracted to novels and stories about inbred hillbilly misfits and the like. So yeah, I downloaded Child of God to my Kindle and started reading.

I’m not going to drop any spoilers here. As of right now I am 67% through the book. It’s a fast read. It is fascinating, disgusting, and wonderful. I’m not sure why I say wonderful, but I think it is this…

The thing about McCarthy is that he can use the most beautiful, descriptive, poetic language and then the next sentence makes you want to barf or just retreat from the world. The first of his work that I read — Blood Meridian — I thought it was brilliant, but I think that now 3 books into his work I am starting to really get what the big deal is about him.

I lack the knowledge to really delve into what I think makes this writing good. Maybe in the coming months I will figure it out. It’s not just violent gross bullshit, and I think that points to the question I’ve got: Why is it not just violent gross bullshit? What makes it good? What makes it literary?

[1forthebooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Child of God Ok. I think this was a pretty good book overall because it definitely questions humanity and pushes the envelope. The story is kind of fast paced but jagged. There are long, poetic descriptions of nature that juxtapose with the cruelty that is actually happening. This book although short was not a quick read because I actually had to put it down and re read a few times.

[bricker-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I recently finished The Road which I thoroughly enjoyed so I thought I'd try another McCarthy book. I knew nothing about this before I started and it was a rather big departure. Where The Road was dark and depressing, this book was more solely depraved. It's sort of Ed Gein meets Deliverance.

[stouthearted_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book descends into madness in a way that unsettled me, which is most likely the point. The story of Lester Ballard is not a nice one. He starts out as a poor, uneducated fellow who lives in a cabin in the woods. His awkward social interactions at first seemed to be no different than any other person in his depressed community. But then, Lester crossed the line between socially awkward pervert to morally depraved criminal. His crimes were hard to read, as they involved necrophilia and murder. At first I was wondering, "What the hell is the point of all this?" But upon reflection, I see how Lester's downward spiral represents a return to the primal, especially since Lester ends his spree living in a cave. Could McCarthy's point, then, be that man, when isolated from all society and morality, naturally descends into cruelty, lack of empathy, and impulsiveness? It's a frightening thought.

[jenlamoureux · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Deeply disturbing and brilliantly written.

[kishields · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Powerful, wild story presents a thorough examination of loneliness and lunacy (not necessarily in that order). The style is beautiful, the subject matter grim with very dark humor. Short but packs a wallop. A solid choice for those who like Faulkner, Southern Gothic fiction and contemplating the extremes of human behavior.

[rmckeown_9 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Despite numerous friends and strangers touting the wonderful novel, All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, I never could get much past the first 15-20 pages. This doesn’t happen that often, but when it does I must invoke the rule of 50. Then I read The Road and really enjoyed it. No Country for Old Men soon followed along with Blood Meridian. I decided to take at look at some of his earlier works, and I started with Child of God. This tense novel fits in nicely with the others I have read.Lester Ballard has been falsely accused of rape for a woman he sees in the woods while hunting. The sheriff arrests him, but it soon becomes obvious he is innocent and released. The experience seems to have an effect on Lester, and he begins a slow spiral into bizarre behavior and insanity. The novel starts off gently, innocently, but as events unfold, the tension mounts. Sometimes – especially early on – I laughed at and with Lester, as he roamed the forested mountains of Eastern Tennessee.Lester’s farm is about to be sold at auction. He protests, and someone hits him over the head. Lester is dazed, and blood trickles from his ears. This injury became a major factor in the rest of the novel.McCarthy has a talent for setting his characters precisely where they belong. He writes, “Ballard descended by giant stone stairs to the dry floor of the quarry. The great rock walls with their cannelured faces and featherdrill holes composed about him an enormous amphitheatre. The ruins of an old truck lay rusting in the honeysuckle. He crossed the corrugated stone floor among chips and spalls of stone. The truck looked like it had been machine gunned. At the far end of the quarry was a rubble tip and Ballard stopped to search for artifacts, tilting old stoves and water heaters, inspecting bicycle parts and corroded buckets. He salvaged a worn kitchen knife with a chewed handle. He called the dog, his voice relaying from rock to rock and back again. // When he came out to the road again a wind had come up. A door somewhere was banging, an eerie sound in the empty wood. Ballard walked up the road. He passed a rusted tin shed and beyond it a wooden tower. He looked up. High up on the tower a door creaked open and clapped shut. Ballard looked around. Sheets of roofing tin clattered and banged and a white dust was blowing off the barren yard by the quarry shed. Ballard squinted in the dust going up the road. By the time he got to the county road it had begun to spit rain. He called the dog once more and he waited and then he went on (38-39).This vivid writing is so intense, I expected something odd, or strange, or bizarre to happen at any moment. So early in the novel, I am lulled into the belief this was a story about a poor, unemployed mountain man trying to scratch out a meager existence. He was that, but as the novel unfolds, he becomes so much more. Most definitely an adult novel, Cormac McCarthy's Child of God, will make the hair stand to attention. The ending I imagined to be inevitable did not happen. I read this brief novel in a little over two afternoons. I did not sleep well that night. 5 stars.--Chiron, 5/10/15

[yougotamber · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Great writing which is what I expect from McCarthy. The story was another of his that took a long time to get into and follows a character you would never wish to know. I find this book a good character piece but lacking the compelling storyline that makes a great book for me. So good but not great.

[33racoonie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Not for the faint of heart. Violence and deviance. One can not just read this story, McCarthy's writing forces one to experience it.

[lanewillson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reading Cormac McCarthy is often trying to cross a familiar, busy, four way intersection with when the lights aren’t working. There is a mixture of the ordinary daily banal with a sense of surprise and danger. No quotation marks, and other grammar ticks make the reading feel strange and unfamiliar. This sense of never quite feeling comfortable is almost another character in McCarthy’s Child of God.Ballard, the main character, draws sympathy, and even admiration as a homeless man working to care for himself as best he can. This is quickly followed by revulsion as he violates humanity. The story then seems fueled by the question of whether Ballard is insane or evil. Neither description offers shelter, and in each there is a place where one can see themselves. To my mind this is what makes Child of God so powerful.

[nbsp_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wow, such economy of words. A beautifully written tale of horror.

[homericgeek-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Coming to this book, I knew only that the main character, Lester Ballard, had some strange ways, but I didn't know how strange until several chapters into the book. It is an interesting read; McCarthy has a way of making it seem dream-like: broken up, but still flowing together. I'm not sure that makes sense, but that's how it reads to me. He kept the chapters short, most being only a single scene: some shorter, some longer. The short chapters coupled with Lester's bizarre behavior keeps you turning the pages, not to mention the "need" to know what happens....There is a strong link to mythology in most of McCarthy's work and this book is no different. There are trips to the underworld, shape-shifting and tragedy among other motifs. Without giving away too much, I will say that this book is not for the faint of heart. If Nabokov's Lolita bothers you, then there is a possibility that this will, too. It isn't exactly the same as Lolita , but the deviance of Lester, the main character, is very pronounced as is that of Humbert Humbert. But, in the case of Child of God, Lester is not the narrator.I wonder if you could still call Lester a protagonist? He does change, but not much. The reader gets the sense that he is depraved right from the beginning. It's the level, or depth, of his depravity that changes. The writing itself will not disappoint fans of McCarthy. His prose, as always, is tight and musical; the critics like to call it poetic, which it is. It damn near sings. I give it four stars simply for the prose. The content gives me pause; that's not to say that we should ignore it, it's just more unsettling than a book with a happy-go-lucky attitude and a bright happy ending. McCarthy almost never has happy endings and this is no exception. He does have "just" endings on occasion, or endings in which those who deserve it get it, if you get my drift.I will read it again, simply because I love McCarthy's writing and want to learn from him. If I were reading it as a reader only, once would be enough--maybe more than enough.

[librarycin · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This story follows Lester Ballard. He seems abusive to people and rapes women (girls?). (Although apparently I missed the part where he was “falsely” accused, as it says in the description of the book. Falsely? Really? I thought he had... Apparently this was a part I skimmed?)This was... very odd. The chapters are very short and the entire book is short, so it was – at least – fast to read, but – at least for speed – it also helped that I skimmed through a good portion of it, though obviously I misunderstood, likely due to my skimming.

[hemlokgang · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Clearly one of the great writers of our generation! Meet Lester Ballard of east Tennessee....ignorant, impulsive, impoverished, isolated, emotionally needy, and....innocent....primitive predator.....and child of god? I think Lester is McCarthy's everyman. It is painful to follow his tracks in this story, primarily because he acts out all that is uncivilized, unsocialized, and dark about being human. Not easy to read because Lester is not easy to love, yet I loved the character and the story.

[bonniemarjorie · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

'Each leaf that brushed his face deepened his sadness and dread. Each leaf he passed he'd never pass again. They rode over his face like veils, already some yellow, their veins like slender bones where the sun shone through them.'Lester Ballard is a man born into hardship and is seemingly cursed with tragedy. His mother leaves him and his father when he was young and he is the first to find his father's body hanging from the rafters when he is just ten years old forcing him to seek help from the townsfolk to get his body down. This requires a quick advancement in maturity considering he's all by himself and there's no one left to care for him and the small town he resides in has no intention of doing him any favors.Lester being made an outcast in his own community is one of the major themes of the novel. He's constantly rejected by everyone for being strange and different yet he never fails to continue trying to find his place in the town. Their rejection and judgment becomes borderline cruel when he isn't even accepted within the walls of the church. In addition to the desire for a place in the community, what he desires more is a connection with a woman and he receives nothing but disgust from the female gender. This ongoing rejection can easily be blamed for the reason he took the path he did because he grew up isolated and lacks any sort of moral compass or understanding of right and wrong. His first crime occurs when he stumbles upon the car of a man and a woman who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the midst of having sex. He decides to not only have sex with the woman but he takes her body back to his house. While it's easy to be immediately repulsed, it's actually quite rueful if you consider that this was the first woman he encountered in his life that didn't immediately run from him in disgust. It's deplorable, yes, but it's also pitiable. What's most impressive is the fact that McCarthy is able to portray Lester as a morally perplexed human being rather than the quick to judge "psychopath" description that is equally fitting. It's surprisingly difficult not to feel as least a modicum of pity for the man who was left to raise himself at the age of ten, was later tossed out of his own house and left with no where else to go and forced to live in an abandoned house that just barely protects him from the elements. While this obviously doesn't excuse him from his horrible crimes (I don't believe that was ever McCarthy's intention anyways) it does depict him as an actual person, a child of God, and not a monster and that's quite possibly even scarier.McCarthy abandons literary standards by flipping between different writing styles seemingly at random and fails to utilize quotation marks which never fails to infuriate me. Trying to decipher who is talking and when they're actually talking and not just thinking... that should never be an issue. The various use of prose strewn throughout the novel was definitely a break from the truly ugly story this was and was most welcome.This book came under fire when a teacher in Tuscola, Illinois asked his Freshman aged pre-Advanced Placement students to choose the book they wish to read for a book report. The parents of a young girl were so offended by the material that the teacher provided their 14 year-old child that they filed an official complaint with the sheriff's office. From what I can find, no charges stuck with the teacher but this is still appalling. While I can agree this book covers material that may not be suitable for a 14 year old (The main character kills several people and rapes the corpses of women. Another character rapes his daughter.) however I think in this case monitoring of reading material should be handled by the parents. They could have easily had their child pick another book from the list. Charges against the teacher? That's ludicrous. In addition to that, the banning of this book (or any book) only limits how a person is informed and prevents sheltering an individual from the harsh realities of the world. This story is inspired by actual events in Sevier County, Tennessee so while I don't believe it's the best book for a young person, I do not believe it should be banned because I'd rather have a child that's informed and aware about the world rather than one that walks this Earth oblivious.

[maryreinert · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is truly a horrifying novel. The subject matter of a crazed killer is not something that I would normally be drawn to, but quite honestly was drawn by the title although I knew this wasn't going to be a walk in the park having read "Road" and "No Country for Old Men." For me, this was the best.The writing in this book is so gripping. McCarty paints a terrifying picture of Ballard yet without preaching, moralizing, or sympathizing, the reader gets a tiny glimpse of an understanding of what allienation and isolation can cause in an individual and in a society. The scene of Ballard bringing the wounded bird to the pitiful child and the child's reaction is one of the most gripping I have ever read.[The situation was reminiscent of a situation in "Gilead" by Marianne Robinson[[ASIN:031242440X Gilead: A Novel] Likewise, the description of Ballard watching "the diminutive progress of all things in the valley, the gray fields coming up black...Squatting there he let his head drop between his knees and he began to cry." It takes a very skilled writer to believably bring out that thread of humanity in such a deprived character.This is not a pretty book and certainly not a pleasant read, but one that needs to be read by anyone who questions who is really a child of God.

[paulacheg · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful language, disturbing plot - but the most disturbing bits are unsaid.

[icedream_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I can't think of the last time I read a book that repulsed me so much while still keeping me absolutely captivated. I'm not the kind of person who wants to rubberneck while passing a car accident but I guess when it comes to reading this McCarthy novel I am doing the literary equivalent.
I can't help myself, I think McCarthy's writing is so brilliant in it's simplicity. The descriptiveness of his writing is so vivid that I have a mini-movie going on in my head every time I read his books. Child of God was a horror movie.
It is the story of Lester Ballard; a troubled, uneducated man on the fringe of society at the beginning of the novel. Through the book a series of circumstances occurs that lead Lester deeper into isolation and gross depravity. I mean seriously gross depravity! Yet McCarthy manages to keep Lester, well I can't say sympathetic but somehow almost animalistic, stripped down to base emotions that I found I couldn't bring myself to rise to the level of righteous indignation that his actions deserved.
I love a book that begs for serious discussion and that is what McCarthy has done with this book. With Lester's character I see a repulsive character in his manners and his behavior that by far passes anything close to acceptable human behavior. Yet McCarthy calls him "A child of God much like yourself perhaps" right from the beginning of the book just so that statement would stick with me through out the story and kept me shaking my head no, how could Lester be a child of God?