Lester Ballard is probably the ancestor of all those white trash Hillbillies, flogging to Walmart in their pyjamas, voting for D. Trump, beating the shit of each other on Jerry Spinger, and sleeping with a rifle underneath their bed.

Lester Ballard is a creep, a perv, a necrophiliac, an up-to-no-gooder, dumb as a brick but very talented with his rifle. Since he cannot find his place in society, he tries to escape it - with desastrous results.

The story comes at a lumpy pace, jumps from here to there, much like the slightly retarted mind of Lester and is no fun to read. Same as the style, the content is also not much to my liking. The reader follows lester and his derelict way of life, his leering repellent actions, his dirty, nasty thoughts. Sometimes I felt soiled just by reading about it and the book made me feel physically sick.

On a positive side: the atmosphere of Tennessee back in the days comes across quite well, even though the author uses few words.

Other than that I cannot find many positive words about this novel, which was thankfully rather short.

I have many friends raving about Cormac McCarthy, so I might have just picked the wrong book to start with. Maybe I don't "get" the underlying meaning of it, but the whole content was just weird. Reading about a stinking, dirty Hillbilly that shoots people for the fun of it and rapes dead bodies feels just wrong.

For those who already like McCarthy and don't mind some nasty pictures in your head while reading: go ahead and read.