Outer Dark

Outer Dark

1968 • 257 pages

Ratings26

Average rating3.9

15

From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road • 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. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.

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“A dead man's dog ain't got a name.”

November 19, 2022

I don't even know what to say, it did remind me of The Road, and is not a happy time. I did read this because someone had it on a psychological horror list and hmm. I'd say grimdark for sure.

March 7, 2021

It's impossible to argue with McCarthy's prose, and the thudding dread of this is exquisite. It doesn't quite reach the heights of some of his other work for me, but still fantastic work here.

September 25, 2024