Cormac McCarthy - Suttree

Cormac McCarthy's highly unusual novel, set in 1951 Knoxville (where the author grew up), is the story of Cornelius Suttree, a distinct oddball unlike the young, questing heroes of most of McCarthy's other books. Suttree has given up a life of patrician wealth to live alone on a broken-down old houseboat on the Tennessee River, where he hopes to learn the secret of life as it is embodied by the ever-flowing river--and to fish in peace. With echoes of both HUCKLEBERRY FINN and ULYSSES, McCarthy's novel follows Suttree as he unavoidably encounters a vast variety of people along the river, including drunks, thieves, lost children, whores, a blind man, a preacher, a gravedigger, even a witch. SUTTREE is a sad, compassionate, and funny novel told in McCarthy's incomparable fluid, rhythmic, lyrical prose.