It's always been such a pleasure to read McCarthy. It's hard to believe that he is gone and there won't be anymore. Does that cast a light on this book ... definitely. After all, (I apologize to Mr. McCarthy's memory for using a comma there) pretty soon I wouldn't have been able to read a new one anyway. Some quotes for your enjoyment:

If someone said to you that you had thrown your life away over a woman what would you say? Well thrown.

When the onset of universal night is finally acknowledged as irreversible even the coldest cynic will be astonished at the celerity with which every rule and stricture shoring up this creaking edifice is abandoned and every aberrancy embraced. It should be quite a spectacle. However brief.

Best cheeseburger I ever ate was at the lunch counter at Comer's Pool Hall on Gay Street in Knoxville Tennessee. You couldn't get the grease off your fingers with gasoline. [This quote is the opposite of damning with faint praise. It is praising with faint damnation.] ( )

Having read a few dozen books in common is more binding than blood. ( )

"Suffering is a part of the human condition and must be borne. But misery is a choice," and Bobby Western is a man in misery broken by the loss of his sister, several close friends, sought by government agents he knows not why, unemployed and unhoused much of the book allowing for extravagant descriptions of weather ("It had rained earlier and the moon lay in the wet street like platinum manhole cover.") nature, birds ("In the spring of the year birds began to arrive on the beach from across the gulf. Weary passerines. Vireos. Kingbirds and grosbeaks. Too exhausted to move. You could pick them up out of the sand and hold them trembling in your palm. Their small hearts beating and their eyes shuttering. He walked the beach with his flashlight the whole of the night to fend away predators and toward the dawn he slept with them in the sand. That none disturb these passengers.") The idea of the missing passenger from the downed plane is never clear, but I let it go as government chicanery regarding the missing passenger. I meandered through the author's digressions on physics, math, war, atom bombs, guns, cars and Kennedys, what is a photon? I did not love the hallucinations and dream segments, but I would not, could not, stop reading because of the dialogue, rich descriptions and settings especially New Orleans and Ibiza. Is Bobby's future a "nameless burial in the hard caliche of a potter's field in a foreign land?" Reminded me of past reading treks with [a:Robert Stone|14174585|Robert Stone|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] or [a:Jim Harrison|17055|Jim Harrison|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1384235534p2/17055.jpg].

Merged review:

"Suffering is a part of the human condition and must be borne. But misery is a choice," and Bobby Western is a man in misery broken by the loss of his sister, several close friends, sought by government agents he knows not why, unemployed and unhoused much of the book allowing for extravagant descriptions of weather ("It had rained earlier and the moon lay in the wet street like platinum manhole cover.") nature, birds ("In the spring of the year birds began to arrive on the beach from across the gulf. Weary passerines. Vireos. Kingbirds and grosbeaks. Too exhausted to move. You could pick them up out of the sand and hold them trembling in your palm. Their small hearts beating and their eyes shuttering. He walked the beach with his flashlight the whole of the night to fend away predators and toward the dawn he slept with them in the sand. That none disturb these passengers.") The idea of the missing passenger from the downed plane is never clear, but I let it go as government chicanery regarding the missing passenger. I meandered through the author's digressions on physics, math, war, atom bombs, guns, cars and Kennedys, what is a photon? I did not love the hallucinations and dream segments, but I would not, could not, stop reading because of the dialogue, rich descriptions and settings especially New Orleans and Ibiza. Is Bobby's future a "nameless burial in the hard caliche of a potter's field in a foreign land?" Reminded me of past reading treks with [a:Robert Stone|14174585|Robert Stone|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] or [a:Jim Harrison|17055|Jim Harrison|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1384235534p2/17055.jpg].

Merged review:

"Suffering is a part of the human condition and must be borne. But misery is a choice," and Bobby Western is a man in misery broken by the loss of his sister, several close friends, sought by government agents he knows not why, unemployed and unhoused much of the book allowing for extravagant descriptions of weather ("It had rained earlier and the moon lay in the wet street like platinum manhole cover.") nature, birds ("In the spring of the year birds began to arrive on the beach from across the gulf. Weary passerines. Vireos. Kingbirds and grosbeaks. Too exhausted to move. You could pick them up out of the sand and hold them trembling in your palm. Their small hearts beating and their eyes shuttering. He walked the beach with his flashlight the whole of the night to fend away predators and toward the dawn he slept with them in the sand. That none disturb these passengers.") The idea of the missing passenger from the downed plane is never clear, but I let it go as government chicanery regarding the missing passenger. I meandered through the author's digressions on physics, math, war, atom bombs, guns, cars and Kennedys, what is a photon? I did not love the hallucinations and dream segments, but I would not, could not, stop reading because of the dialogue, rich descriptions and settings especially New Orleans and Ibiza. Is Bobby's future a "nameless burial in the hard caliche of a potter's field in a foreign land?" Reminded me of past reading treks with [a:Robert Stone|14174585|Robert Stone|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] or [a:Jim Harrison|17055|Jim Harrison|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1384235534p2/17055.jpg]. ( )

Absolutely stunning writing, and I have no idea what I just read. This novel rewards careful analytical reading.. which I didn’t do this time through. Probably reader error more than author error, but I’m baffled. ( )

I had hoped that McCarthy's penultimate work would help me reconcile with the writer. It might just be me, but apart from The Road, none of his previous books appealed to me. And here too it didn't work: the sometimes absurd dialogues, the tough talk among men (who the hell still writes about the Vietnam War?), the treatise-like passages about theoretical physics, the banal descriptive scenes of successive actions, ..., no I just don't like his style. And then the attempt at suspense about the missing passenger from the plane that crashed into the sea: it did not exceed the level of a cheap action movie. In short, too much fuss about too little substance. That pretty much sums up my McCarthy experience. ( )