OUTER DARK by Cormac McCarthy ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Cormac McCarthy is proof that the rules for writing are only guidelines. Sometimes breaking the mold can work in your favor.

You come out of the first page already dripping in voice. Like they’re in the room with you, the hot air of their breath and the country heat in your ear. I’ve never read a more authentic sounding narrative. As if McCarthy travelled to 1900 and went to small-town Appalachia, writing down what he heard word-for-word. No other author documents the wilds of rural America like him. The hardship, the harshness, the way every encounter with another human can be preternaturally impactful. Some authors write something new, and others are a conduit for something more mysteriously true. McCarthy is the latter.

I don’t know if we can ever really know what it’s like to live in any other time but our own. But if we could, this book would be one way of doing it. A glimpse at a world with a lot of darkness and only pockets of light. Danger is everywhere. If there’s a chance you’ll get bit, or beaten, or bewildered, it’ll happen. Even following your own routines isn’t enough to save you. Because the things in the dark can find you, and they mean to. Seems like the only way around it is to be lucky. Maybe that’s all that the survivors of these times were. Made me appreciate the locks on our door and the light on the porch a whole lot more.