Child of God

The book suffers from sentences used for shock value and the transvestite/trans-phobic trope of a lusty cross-dressing killer. It's two to three sentences staggered through the book, but it still creates a line of thought that cross-dressing is aligned with ill mind. Cormac later writes with what I remember to be a trans-positive character in The Passenger, but I read that in haste and while working nights and it warrants a re-read.

I think there's elements of isolation, human condition, social standards, cultural changes, and colonization criticism, but I wouldn't argue that any are “strong” other than Isolation and human condition. The human condition being creatures of equal creation who have changed little since their inception/evolution and suffer the same frailty of social development that some, like Lester, are deprived of. Isolation being obvious. The lack of development being Lester's family members had abandoned him or were killed (by themselves or otherwise) and he had “white hood” family relations. Mostly raised ambiguously alone on the fringe of society.

I do not doubt that some people find kinship in Lester. Aside from the murder/desecration of dead bodies and his lust that defies age boundaries, he's a lonely rural person. Still, one hopes that, when finding oneself engaged in conversation over this book, that the other individual(s) find Lester to be
an un-empathetic case.