Whoa. Just finished, processing, mulling, wondering...what do I say? How do you prepare someone? Should someone be prepared (I wasn't)? Imagine the most depressing story you've ever read (and I've read ALL of McCarthy), narrated by the angriest of narrators (who may mellow, then again, maybe readers simply become hardened), describing circumstances that are necessarily ugly (war, colonial Africa) or merely simply ugly (contemporary culture, old people, young people, other people), but then told with a humor that makes it hard to put down (set down or belittle). The parts that ring true frighten with self-recognition; the parts that ring less true, smack of the absurd to again frighten with self-recognition. And what doesn't provoke self-recognition provokes dread of foreshadowing (in the novel and in one's own perspectives).I'd recommend this one to happy people--in the hope they get over it.I'd recommend this one to depressives--so they'd learn just how far they have left to go.I'd recommend this one to...well, I don't really know who to recommend it to. Maybe you.Unlike anything I've read, and it will send me back for more Celine--just not right away.