Cormac McCarthy's tenth novel, The Road, is his most harrowing yet deeply personal work. Some unnamed catastrophe has scourged the world to a burnt-out cinder, inhabited by the last remnants of mankind and a very few surviving dogs and fungi. The sky is perpetually shrouded by dust and toxic particulates; the seasons are merely varied intensities of cold and dampness. Bands of cannibals roam the roads and inhabit what few dwellings remain intact in the woods.
Through this nightmarish residue of America a haggard father and his young son attempt to flee the oncoming Appalachian winter and head towards the southern coast along carefully chosen back roads. Mummified corpses are their only benign companions, sitting in doorways and automobiles, variously impaled or displayed on pikes and tables and in cake bells, or they rise in frozen poses of horror and agony out of congealed asphalt. The boy and his father …
Cormac McCarthy's tenth novel, The Road, is his most harrowing yet deeply personal work. Some unnamed catastrophe has scourged the world to a burnt-out cinder, inhabited by the last remnants of mankind and a very few surviving dogs and fungi. The sky is perpetually shrouded by dust and toxic particulates; the seasons are merely varied intensities of cold and dampness. Bands of cannibals roam the roads and inhabit what few dwellings remain intact in the woods.
Through this nightmarish residue of America a haggard father and his young son attempt to flee the oncoming Appalachian winter and head towards the southern coast along carefully chosen back roads. Mummified corpses are their only benign companions, sitting in doorways and automobiles, variously impaled or displayed on pikes and tables and in cake bells, or they rise in frozen poses of horror and agony out of congealed asphalt. The boy and his father hope to avoid the marauders, reach a milder climate, and perhaps locate some remnants of civilization still worthy of that name. They possess only what they can scavenge to eat, and the rags they wear and the heat of their own bodies are all the shelter they have. A pistol with only a few bullets is their only defense besides flight. Before them the father pushes a shopping cart filled with blankets, cans of food and a few other assets, like jars of lamp oil or gasoline siphoned from the tanks of abandoned vehicles—the cart is equipped with a bicycle mirror so that they will not be surprised from behind.
Through encounters with other survivors brutal, desperate or pathetic, the father and son are both hardened and sustained by their will, their hard-won survivalist savvy, and most of all by their love for each other. They struggle over mountains, navigate perilous roads and forests reduced to ash and cinders, endure killing cold and freezing rainfall. Passing through charred ghost towns and ransacking abandoned markets for meager provisions, the pair battle to remain hopeful. They seek the most rudimentary sort of salvation. However, in The Road, such redemption as might be permitted by their circumstances depends on the boy’s ability to sustain his own instincts for compassion and empathy in opposition to his father’s insistence upon their mutual self-interest and survival at all physical and moral costs.
The Road was the winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Literature.
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Well written and propulsive, but grim as, without much payoff? Who were the “good guys” and how were they able to survive, and why were they good?- it cannot just be a matter of not eating other humans. One review on the back of the book stated that it “serves as a warning”, but for what? Climate change? How, when everything was burned, were there still houses standing? I dunno, maybe post apocalyptic literature is just not my jam.
I think the takeaway with this tale is to never stop trying, to never give up. There’s no promise of something better, just the very human decision to will yourself forward. That if a better place is indeed out there, it can only be reached through effort, one step at a time.
I can see why for many this is a beloved book for some, but it didn't capture me.
The writing often felt plodding and overwrought, instead of evocative and touching. And this novel is all scene and style and very little story, so there was not much else to go on.
I found myself wishing this had been a short story instead of a novel.
This book is powerful. Not a lot happens but I couldn't set it down.I don't understand the man's intentions on the surface. But, on some level I want to understand their actions. I was drawn to the characters and their relationship to each other. The love the man has is healthy in a dying world. The two face the world in stoic resistance. I will need to unpack this book over the next few days. This is a love story on a human level. I recommend reading it.
The story is fairly dark and bleak. It is also quite repetitive, I almost put the book down because it kept repeating the same scenario, but varied just enough to get to the end. It was looking for more details on what happened, though them not knowing, I suppose, is part of the story.
The book is written with a distinct style, filled with dialog but not the customary dialog tags, confusing at times but not overly so. I realized it didn't always matter who said it.
Nothing compared to Blood Meridian, like his other awful recent work, The Road makes no excuses for its predictable plot events (mad max cliche meets steinbeck sentimentality) McCarthy's work is really about the language but even then, his ability to plumb interior depths through words is far and away the exception to a screenplay-style rule with "picture the actor" dialog and "picture the screen" prose. Takes about as long to read as a watching a movie too, which is to say, not a lot to ponder here, just march through it til it's done. As literature, this is no Melville, no Steinbeck, no Hemingway, and no good.
