mpeachhead
08-25-2009, 01:27 PM
An epic river novel that takes place in Knoxville, Tennessee, during the 1950s and follows the aimless wanderings of sometime fisherman Cornelius Suttree, who has eschewed a life of privilege in order to live on a houseboat on the river and cavort with the seedy underside of Knoxville. The novel is McCarthy's funniest, with great supporting characters like Harrogate, who is the source of most of the comedy in the novel. The portrayal of Knoxville is both achingly realistic and apocalyptic at the same time. The opening pages describe it in wasteland terms figuring the Tennessee River as this polluted cesspool of filth and grime where aborted fetuses float alongside of used condoms.
The novel is quite good, but the ending seems unsatisfying, a frequent criticism of McCarthy's work. For what it's worth, I normally don't feel that way about his novels, but in this instance, the reader expects something to actually happen at the end. The novel is long and epic and filled with fantastic events, yet it ends with the main character having a mild and rather vague epiphany after a bout of typhoid fever. Still, it's worth the read. It's probably his best work, and Roger Ebert calls it his masterpiece.
The novel is quite good, but the ending seems unsatisfying, a frequent criticism of McCarthy's work. For what it's worth, I normally don't feel that way about his novels, but in this instance, the reader expects something to actually happen at the end. The novel is long and epic and filled with fantastic events, yet it ends with the main character having a mild and rather vague epiphany after a bout of typhoid fever. Still, it's worth the read. It's probably his best work, and Roger Ebert calls it his masterpiece.