An amazing book. Not as perfect as Blood Meridian or The Road, but still amazing (as only anything by McCarthy can ever be amazing). In some bits he still seems like he's searching for his distinct authorial voice - as if he hasn't firmly embraced yet his sharp vacillation between the mundane details of reality and the breathtaking glimpses of universal human experience that make his later writing so great and unique. But these (mostly narrative) sections are few and far between, and in general it's a joy to read. The plot structure may be slightly trite and conventional, but again, this is never the main selling point of his novels - it's always about the greater scheme of things on the one hand, and the general atmosphere of human wretchedness and mundaneity (and cruelty, in later works) on the other. And Suttree evokes this very, very well.
