WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son’s fight to survive that “only adds to McCarthy’s stature as a living master. It’s gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful” (San Francisco Chronicle).
One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.
The Roadis the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.
Since this is a mini review, you might be able to guess how I felt about The Road. I tend to have no problem reviewing books that I loved, and also books that I was enraged by, but books that were so boring that I wanted to tear my eyes out are so difficult to review.
The Road is a post-apocalyptic novel, and it’s really highly rated. Really, really highly. Whenever there’s a list of post-apocalyptic books you HAVE to read, The Road is pretty much always in the top three. It’s about a father and his son who cross the United States (I can’t remember where they were going, but whatever. USA) that has been torn apart by the apocalypse. While they’re travelling down this Road (capital R for emphasis), they get into a lot of trouble and it’s all pretty dark and bleak.
It’s not that things don’t happen in this novel. Actually, The Road is quite action packed. There are lots of fights and other people and deaths and things, but none of them were enough to grip me. I didn’t have the attention span for it, and I think it was because of McCarthy’s writing style. He’s just not very engaging.
