60 The Son by Phillipp Meyer
The story follows generations of the McCullough family from the 1840s to the present day, told through the alternating narratives of three family members. The lynchpin is Eli, who is captured by the Comanches and lives among them for several years before returning. His experiences of the struggle for survival and supremacy in Texas influence his family for generations, as they build their fortunes first in land, then cattle, then oil. It is brimful of ideas about humanity, and delivers a bleak outlook on the idea of progress - the strong thrive in harsh circumstances, and prey on the weak to succeed, but this is finite and everything is inevitably, ultimately, in decline as resources are used up and skills are lost.
This started off brutally fascinating and engrossing, particularly Eli's narrative, but I didn't feel it quite sustained the promise in the latter half, though still very good. I felt the present day narrative, from a female point of view, was the weakest, she wasn't as strong a character, but all the stories became a little less compelling and bit repetitive, and the author seemed to get a little distracted by his own boring sex scenes, to the point where if a man and woman were in a room, something of this nature would take place or be hinted at. Now this may have all been part of portraying the underlying primitive nature of humankind, but all the same, got a bit tedious. It ended strong though.
This was well worth reading, but fell short of the five star read I thought it might be from the beginning.