Outer Dark

by Cormac McCarthy

Outer Dark is a novel at once fabular and starkly evocative, set is an unspecified place in Appalachia, sometime around the turn of the century.  A woman bears her brother's child, a boy; he leaves the baby in the woods and tells her he died of natural causes.  Discovering her brother's lie, she sets forth alone to find her son.  Both brother and sister wander separately through a countryside being scourged by three terrifying and elusive strangers, headlong toward an eerie, apocalyptic resolution.

• ISBN10: 1417718447
• ISBN13: 9781417718443
• Publish Date: 1 June 1993 (first published 10 September 1970)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 7 April 2021
• Imprint: Turtleback Books
• Edition: Turtleback School & Library ed.
• Format: Hardcover (Library Binding)
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

Vivid and brutal, and as always the dialogue sings. It lacks the beating heart that’s in McCarthy’s other work, but there’s something else going on here, something aimless and blunt and it would crush you if it had more heart. It requires detachment and observation. Look elsewhere for redemption. This is a damn good wandering tale.