A Scottish-Canadian Blethering On About Books

Reading this had much the same feel for me as reading Cormac McCarthy, and not just because of the irritating "literary" habit of conveying direct dialogue without quotation marks (a habit that puts the reader through a lot of extra work of comprehension without any sort of benefits, most of the time). It's spare to the point of being laconic, leaves a lot of plot & emotional gaps for you to fill in, and is set in a very unforgiving landscape that echoes the apparent aridity of the characters' lives. Oh, and of course it's full of symbolism and religious (or quasi-religious) imagery.

I would have sunk my teeth into this one with a lot more enthusiasm when I was a student of literature many years ago. Now I can only note that while I enjoyed puzzling out the narrative as I was reading it, I can barely remember either characters or progression of events a mere month later, and have no particular desire to re-engage with them. For me, at least, it's definitely more of a curiosity than a classic.