A Classic - Rated 
Grotesque content, beautifully crafted. Cave's language is unique in its combination of styles - echoes of Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas and Poe. A refreshing read - horrifically compelling. Shocking, yet beautifully poetic; I couldn't put it down.
I've never met anyone who has actually read the whole of this book - Rated 
Amazing that folk are writing excellent reviews when in actual fact the book is unreadable. NC may be a god like genius BUT .....
Troubling, for the modern day not least - Rated 
This is a chilling book, one I admit I had to stop reading for some time it left me so disturbed. Then I returned to it.
It's especially relevant in view of the upsurge of fundamental Christianity in the US and elsewhere. A claustrophobic, Old-Testament steeped (whence the title) community far out in the wild develops its own ways, including inbreeding and bigotry, spiced with a tendency to alcoholism. Such religious virtue as there is lies only at skin level, if even there. It's so very reminiscent of the revelations in recent years of the true lives of 'televangelists'. Be warned: this is a troubling book to read once it gains a hold on you. It troubled me, a one-time religious teacher, now a secular humanist. When you have read it, look again at the religious credentials, increasingly mandatory, of so many of our political figures - in the US above all.
Dark Humor, Dark Book, Not for the Faint of Heart - Rated
Euchrid Eucrow, a mute born to an abusive mother and a father obsessed with animal torture, is an outcast in a valley of conservative religious zealots. He silently takes his mother's beatings, his father's indifference, and the hatred of an entire town. But though he may be silent, his tortured mind is chock full of terrible angelic visions and he goes mad, leaving one to wonder if he can be blamed for the vengeance he exacts on the people who have made his life so awful and so painful.
Sometimes this four star book was a little hard for me to take, but I couldn't put it down.
Review submitted by Captain Osborne
Dark poetry - Rated
Cave's obsession with all things grotesque could have led to this book becoming a vile carnival of obscenity. However, in the story of Euchrid Eucrow, the product of generations of inbreeding and hard drinking, we discover a refined literary talent. As Euchrid, vilified social outcast, is persecuted by his community, his delicate soul cries out from amidst the circus of hypocrisy betraying sensitivity well-disguised. A poignant and tragic tale, it delivers indictments of religious pomposity in prose poetry bordering on the bombastic.
Cave has writen a prose version of his Murder Ballads, bleak ending and generally unpalatable characters all present and correct. It's fantastic fiction.
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