gj667cc

I mentioned this in a reply above, but I'd recommend The Crossing for a similar level of poetic descriptive beauty with a lesser (but still significant) degree of violence.

I have similar feelings, when I recommend it I include a big disclaimer about the violence. Some of those scenes lingered in my mind for months afterwards, and I don't think I'll ever fully lose the impact of the novel's ending.

I also really enjoy his novel The Crossing, and feel that it has similarly beautiful, poetic descriptions while being a much more introspective and character-focused novel. Still plenty of violence, but nothing close to the brutality of Blood Meridian.

I read it for the first time a few years ago, and due to purely coincidental timing I finished it over the course of a weeklong trip to Big Bend National Park in West Texas. McCarthy lived not far away in El Paso when he wrote it, and the scenery in Big Bend is the embodiment of the way he describes the desert in the book. Haunting and inimical, yet simultaneously beautiful and magical. Being in that setting and hiking and backpacking through the heat really underscored to me how such a stark environment could have driven humans crossing it to unspeakable violence.

I don't specifically remember any of the passages you quoted, which I think means that I'm due for a reread. A few descriptive scenes stick out in my memory, particularly the burning tree and the cattle graveyard.

She is the only human being to both travel in space and dive to Challenger Deep.