Wow… Is our world so messed up? Really?

Men killing their wives and the shoot themselves in front of their own children. People of the church raping young girls, sowing their seed and never give a penny of what becomes of them. Parents turning their backs on their children instead of supporting them. Mothers hating their children, reminders of their worst nightmares. Men hurting their women almost to death and pretending to be true and honest christians. Young men returning from war broken to pieces, physically and psychologically.

Well, yes… This is our world and its weight is just tremendous…

David Joy has done a marvelous work giving us the darkest part of our world. His writing is raw. A punch in our guts for all it’s worth. Trying to wake us from our dream. Trying to make us think we need to become humans again. His characters have been through a lot in their lives. A background ideal for justifying how they have become, how they came to do what they did. Not that they are really justified, but it is the excuse that is used.

But not all of them. Some actions are unjustifiable. Some characters are just mean and evil and this is how our world is. All those things we hear in the news and those that we don’t, are actually there inside the book and in real life too.

The case is that, even though there is no beauty, no repentance, no redemption, no forgiveness, the reader is hooked till the very end. There is no way to know how it ends, yet again, when the final page is read and finished, when there is nothing left to expect, the reader comes to realize that this would be the only ending possible.