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A road to read and travel
The Road won a Pulitzer Prize, so I knew it had to have something special about it. Also it's being made into a film, which is probably not the best advert. It has an intriguing cover though, with man and boy in a gray world in the rain, so, living in rainy Oregon as I do, I decided to give it a try and was immediately hooked: From the first bleak vista, a nameless man reaching out to check the breathing of a nameless child; through miniature scenes, each carefully crafted, no excess words to describe a dying world; through steps and details and how will you open a jar when the lid's stuck and there's no tools left in the strangers' house to grip it...; through conversations with no punctuation because the words themselves punctuate the silence; through sickness and knowing what's coming and not wanting to know--and through knowing what's gone but not wanting that either; through to the point where I know the book's going to end but I hope maybe it won't; to final, lonely, impossible satisfaction.
A few weeks ago a jar of peaches leaked in my kitchen cupboard. Brown sticky fluid dripped down the inside of the door into a puddle on the floor. The tin itself looked rusty, slightly blown. Father and son might have found it there and discarded it rightly as unsafe. McCarthy's book makes me see it again in my mind, and wonder how the rest of my stocks will fare when the world ends.
The Road is a truly beautiful, masterful book, scarily real, emotionally draining, absorbing and haunting and sad. It deserves its prize. It foreshadows everyman's last hope. And I'm glad to have finally joined the ranks of those who have read and enjoyed it.
Haunting and Beautiful
Before reading "The Road", I anticipated hating it. I had heard the reviews: Bleak, depressing, literary (the type of book I usually have to force myself to finish and regret it in the end). However, after the first few pages, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself completely and totally immersed in this book. Only the bleak overall tone keeps me from rating five stars.
I'll leave out my summary, since there are plenty of those out there. Suffice it to say, "The Road" is a post-apocalyptic tale of a father and son's journey in search of survival and hope--and so much more.
Let me first say that Cormac McCarthy is well-deserving of his reputation as "literary genius". I was aware of the beauty of some of the passages and prose, but couldn't slow down long enough to really absorb and take it the depth (perhaps I will go back and reread it). I could not put this book down, could not stop turning the pages, even though very little happens in the way of plot or action. I found myself so invested in the characters and their survival that I simply had to keep reading. Part of me longed for them to find hope and survival, part of me desired for them to be released from their pain and suffering. Either way, I was compelled to follow them down the road.
A must-read.
one of the best so far
in this genre (post apocalipse). The end is just beautiful. I'd recommend it to any one who has the heart and stomach for a sometimes very dark book.
Simple, Direct and Horrifying
Mr. McCarthy's novel most certainly deserves the Pulitzer it was awarded. The author takes a popular topic, a humanity-shattering apocalypse and pares it down to its most terrifying conclusions. The prose is direct and sparse, adroitly mixing stream of consciousness and character dialogue. The reader is hopelessly pulled into the surreal and threatening world the characters inhabit. The only shred of humanity the main characters have to cling to is their love for each other. The point to the story is not to examine in detail how an apocalyptic event may come to be. It is to explore how we as a human race, in an apocalyptic aftermath, may well lose almost all that defines us.
Words do this book injustice
This is a hard book to review as the words to describe it escape me. The Road is very well written and the story will last with you for a long time. The actually content of the story was horrifying and difficult to read at times. This book grabbed me on the first page and didn't let go till the last.
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