WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive, this "tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful" (San Francisco Chronicle). • From the bestselling author of The Passenger
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 Road is 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.
Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.
Given its Oprah and Pulitzer status, this is supposed to be a very profound book, but I just wasn't feeling it. Above all else, I think it's because my mind kept wandering to the movie Children of Men, which was also a post-apocalyptic hopeless-situation-with-a-tiny-glimmer-of-hope sort of story that was simply beautiful and left me in awe. Compared to it, The Road is just dismal and repetitious. I was glad it was under 300 pages, since at the halfway point I was already just DONE with the walking-along-the-road-and-hiding-from-people-and-finding-a-house-and-looting-it-for-food-rinse-and-repeat. I get what the repetition was doing, but that doesn't mean that I enjoyed it.
If I hadn't seen Children of Men, might I have enjoyed this more? It's possible, but difficult to determine. There's certainly something to be said for using simplicity to convey a story, but I kept feeling like so much more could have been done with the themes.
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3 October, 2008:
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