The Road by Cormac McCarthy

"A man and his son travel south through the burned out wasteland that is America. Their days are routine and monotonous but at the same time every moment is rife with terror as they don't know who else or what horrors await them on the road."

3 STARS

Pros: There's a real sense of desperate isolation with just the man and the boy in a burned out world/The ever present ash is a small hint of whatever catastrophe happened, and paints a terrifying scene of desolation/The ending was painful but powerful.

Cons: The man and the boy's conversation is stunted and short. Perhaps it's McCarthy's way of showing the reader what kind of terrible world they live in, that even the light of conversation is as gray and dead as everything else is but at times their conversation is so stunted that it's frustrating/By the end, the monotony of their lives begins to get repetitive but again, it just feeds into that feeing of hopelessness.

Full Review:

A man and a boy travel south through the burned out wasteland that is America. The mother is dead as well as most of the rest of the world, it would appear. The man's only plan is to move south, since winter is coming and he knows they won't survive the cold. They come upon other people, sparingly, and those that they do see are armed and dangerous. They avoid others at all costs, even leaving some to a a cruel fate, to save themselves.

Though some of the fathers actions can be seen as cruel, in the end he does it all for his son, to keep him alive and safe. There are moments of tenderness, moments of harshness and moments of true, heart wrenching grief. Though by the end of the novel, the monotony of their lives began to be repetitive, it blended well with the story. When your only goal is to find "other good guys" what else can you do but wake up and keep on walking, putting one foot in front of the other.

This was an emotionally difficult novel, simply for the desolation and despair that's obvious from the first page. It's never outright explained what happened to reduce the world to chaos and though the reader is curious, that's not what drives the story. The man and the boy's survival is the driving force. You want them to find "the good guys", you want them hold onto their humanity even in the midst of such horror. And most of all, you want them to survive, to stay together and be safe. It shows how strong love is but also how short our lives are.

Though it was a quick read, it was a tough one and I actually found myself tearing up at the end. It wasn't the best book I've read all year but it's definitely one that will stay with me for a long time.

Comments

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