- The Road
- Knopf, 241 pp.
- CLR Rating:
The Road – Through a Shattered Looking Glass Darkly
Post apocalyptic novels are a dark, bleak and often illuminating genre that are highlighted by titles that include The Day of the Triffids, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Eternity Road, On The Beach and Galapagos. J.G. Ballard carved out a large section of this wasted landscape with The Crystal World, The Drowning World, The Burning World and The Wind From Nowhere. But among all of these fine works and dozens more I’ve read, none compares, holds a candle to or rings such gloomy, bleak chords as does Cormac McCarthy’s The Road; all accomplished with an economy of words that is beautiful in its execution.
The story follows a father and son as the they wander, stagger, and grope their way through a burned over, scarred America. Little moves within this incinerated landscape that is smothered in ash driven by a cold wind. The snow is grey. Rivers run thickly clogged with ash and soot. The trees are black skeletons. The pair is heading for the Eastern coast with little hope of finding anything. Anything. Period. They have nothing save a pistol and a handful of bullets to defend themselves against the bands of ravenous ghouls who maraud the roads and heat-buckled Interstates like bizarre, merciless highwaymen. And they have the ragged clothes they’re wearing and a cart of scavenged food. And they have themselves.
I read this book in one take late at night and immediately headed downstairs to kick up the fire and drink some bourbon. I was cold, chilled emotionally, stunned, awe-struck by McCarthy’s words. I mentioned The Road to a singer/songwriter friend and all he could say was “That one put me off my feed for a few days.” Knowing the guy as I do, despite his lyrical, beautiful and often humorous music, I took the comment as high praise for McCarthy’s effort. Dark is dark and some of us have arcane addictions.
The first book I ever read by McCarthy was Blood Meridian. That one knocked me cold with the stark and brutal portrayal of the Southwest with its wicked crew of bizarrely violent Apaches, twisted thieves, derelict cowboys and assorted other human forms of depravity. The language used by McCarthy was without excess, sufficient for its purpose:
He rode back to the camp at the fore of his small column with the chief’s head hanging by its hair from his belt. The men were stringing up scalps on strips of leather whang and some of the dead lay with broad slices of hide cut from their backs to be used for the making of belts and harness. The dead Mexican McGill had been scalped and the bloody skulls were already blackening in the sun…Glanton cursed them on, taking up a lance and mounting the head upon it where it bobbed and leered like a carnival head…
This is the way of it throughout the narrative and clearly Blood Meridian is not everyone’s cup of tea. Nor is the book like his others, like All The Pretty Horses, a book violent in parts like McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, but also like McMurtry’s novel romantic, heroic and a wide-ranging saga. Blood Meridian is not any of this. The tale is brutal to the point of barbarism, a cautionary story written with mordancy by a man who understands language. In The Road McCarthy has cut away even the scarcely visible fat in Blood Meridian, paired his language to harsh basics, to create a landscape that is so awesome in its depraved starkness, so relentless in its totally blasted horizons that he leaves the reader no room to wander, to escape the horror.
He’d tried to think of something to say but he could not. He’d had this feeling before, beyond the numbness and dull despair. The world shrinking down around a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever.
Certainly an existence without hope or redemption quite similar to that of Blood Meridian Though in a highly refined fashion.
McCarthy is one of this country’s best writers authoring nine novels including Suttree, Cities of the Plain and No Country for Old Men. From what I can see, the country in all of his books is no place for old men or those lacking a mad sense of courage. He’s won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Award. His author photo depicts an individual of stern background who’s perhaps seen more than he wanted. The ever-popular eternity stare is in evidence.
But there seems to be a slight glimmer of hope or optimism shining faintly in the wind-blown grimness. All along the journey to the coast, despite the horrors and deprivations the father and son encounter, the two happen upon caches of abundance – canned meats, fruits, vegetables, clean water in a cistern, decent clothing. This may not seem like much, but the finds shimmer like gold in the stygian atmosphere. It is remarkable that McCarthy pulls this off, a testament to his skill, while never ceasing in his relentless portrayal of hopelessness.
An example is near the end (and this is giving nothing away) when the boy is taken in by a family living near the road along the oceanfront after the death of his father:
The woman when she saw him put her arms around him. Oh, she said, I am so glad to see you. She would talk to him sometimes about God. He tried to talk to God but the best thing was to talk to his father and he did talk to him and he didn’t forget. The woman said that was all right. She said that the breath of God was his breath yet though it pass from man to man through all of time.
I’ve read The Road twice now and marvel at how McCarthy ties all of his story together. The book could easily be read from back to front and around again. I look forward to reading this another time, perhaps when I’m in the middle of a canoe trip on the Yellowstone. Timeless is timeless. McCarthy knows this truth well.
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June 15th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
McCarthy writes powerful stuff.
He makes us realize that we only have each other.
He is one of the best. Phew.
I too read it in one sitting, and I never do that with a book.
Bravissimo.
June 15th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
I loved the quote in the review, “This one put me off my feed for a few days.” What an understatement. Once started, one cannot stop reading it but one cannot fail to be deeply affected by it. It takes a while to get over.
Good review.
June 15th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Very good review; not many people know Blood Meridien. The Road hits much closer to home, at least for a father of a son, and yet it is, as you say, more hopeful. McCarthy is unparalleled in modern fiction, or American fiction in my view.
September 29th, 2007 at 1:45 am
Totally awesome book. I’ve recommended it to everyone. It shows the very best of humanity, and the very worst… McCarthy portrays so much depth of feeling with so very few words – it is amazing.
November 25th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Best Fiction of the New Millennium.
(7 years. does ‘00 count?)
all else is commentary.
November 28th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
This was one of the deepest books I have ever read, McCarthy is truly one of the greatest writers of this time. I felt so connected with these two characters and you never even get to know their names!
December 8th, 2007 at 6:21 am
I seriously hated this pointless and poorly written book. I guess I just will never understand the Cult of Cormac. (Which is not to say I didn’t understand the book. I did. It just felt repetitive and ridiculous.)
January 8th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
I was glad to read the comment by Corby Says as they all had been so glowing until his. I agreed completely with him. I have never seen a book filled with so many incomplete sentences. I kept reading hoping I would get answers to the questions, who, when, where, why, and what was going on. I assume that was all left to the reader’s imagination. I can’t believe people say that this is great literature. Diane Cox
February 16th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Just finished reading The Road. I thought “No Country…” was bleak. Although I kind of like his spare writing style, it sometimes is so spare as to be barely an outline of what’s going on. I’m left with the impression that the final book is more like a first-draft manuscript and he never got back to filling in the details. But it does present a terrifying view of what nuclear winter would be like following a war.
February 29th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Ok… just finished reading this one. Truthfully it is an interesting concept, but it seemed to me at least, that the world collapsed into cannibalism a bit quickly… However, it is Mr. mcCarthy’s story and if he wishes to take such a grim, simplistic, view of people then that is his right (I guess). His style is direct and distinct, but by the end you feel you know the characters (always a good sign). Unlike a few of the critics I reviewed, I did not find any hope in the novel at all… just an endless series of beatings. It is the type of book my Mother liked (I think it made her feel like her life wasn’t so bad). I wouldn’t read it again, or volunteer to read anyhting else the man has written, but if you like morose stories McCarthy is you man!
March 24th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I have read the book twice, being a parent my help to understand the understated unconditional love. people who don’t like it seem to be unable to imagine this link. McCarthy leaves spaces that one can fill with your own images. This is much more enjoyable than graphic descriptions of emotions.He gave me the enviroment and I just walked along with them and let my emotions fill in the blanks.
April 1st, 2008 at 9:22 am
Nana — there is understatement and then there is lack of detail that is necessary to easily follow the story. In several places I had to re-read several paragraphs just to figure out what had transpired. It’s sometimes difficult to tell who is speaking in the dialogues, and his avoidance of quotation marks is just annoying. I think he’s a good storyteller, but when writing style gets in the way of narration, there’s a problem.
May 12th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Honesty…this has got to be one of the worst books I have ever read. The story is depressing, not heart-warming. There is no hope for these people page after page after page you turn. The story, truly, is well written (though grammar and punctuation would be great!) but just isn’t the kind of book that I find enjoyable or interesting to read. I became apathetic and disconnected from the story within the first few pages. I’m sad to see so many people loved such a horrid book but they’re welcome to their own opinions.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Corby,
Poorly written? I guess that was overlooked when it won the Pulitzer prize for literature in 2006.Gee, Maybe they should have checked with you and Diane Cox before giving the award to such a “poorly written” book (eyes rolling). Trust me, you did not understand the book.
Diane..are you there? try being a leader not such a follower.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Tarzan read one page, Tarzan say “this not happy book, Tarzan like happy book” “me big authority on books, me throw book in fire” Tarzan has spoken.
May 18th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
This is one of the best books i have ever read. These two people are “carrying the fire” also “each the other’s world entire” they both show love, hope, and companion. This reflects McCarthy’s view on family, here is a father and his son, both know they are going to die, but their love for each other keeps them alive. Throughout the book the father contemplated killing the both of them if the “bad guys” ever caught up to them, but as soon as the boy got sick and the father really had to care for him every second of everyday he realized that he could never kill his son; this is one of the most moving parts of this book.
July 29th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road may or may not have been an intended allegory, as are most books of science fiction, but reading it is to scrape away the thin veneer of civilization at least temporarily, until we put the book down and shiver at the mere thought of such a world created out of the author’s imagination. The veneer is something we all live within, and it shimmers in places around the world, in the bright city lights, in libraries, within the reasonableness of good people; it is a veneer that McCarthy abrades and rightfully so. Humans have an atavistic, recessive gene called violence which, even after a generation of absence, always reappears, and when it does appear again for the final time, The Road lays out what it will be like to have survived the consummate horrors humankind are known to bring about. I am no panegyrist but McCarthy deserves the Prize and praise for this one. The Road is the most relevant book on the shelves today. If you don’t believe, take the time to look around and see for yourself.
August 6th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Horrible!
August 10th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
It’s about the love a parent has for their child even under the most brutal of circumstances. We’ve already seen the apocalypse in Hitler’s Germany, Rwanda, Cambodia, etc, etc. The premise is hardly science fiction/
August 12th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
I don’t know how all you people felt this was such a good book. I had to read it for school and it was probably one of the worst books I have been forced to read. For those of you that said it was hard to put down, for me it was quite the opposite; it was hard to pick up.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:56 am
Deep, dark, glowing book. If you hated it, you don’t have a soul. Of course it is relentlessly bleak, but that makes the faint outlines of hope as life affirming as when they encounter the underground shelter and food.
BTW, the reviewer says “and this is giving nothing away,” before revealing that at the end of the book, the father dies and the boy is taken in by a family. Seriously? That didn’t give anything away?? What a tool.
September 11th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
hey diane, corby, and anyone else who didn’t like the book.
don’t worry. to be honest. i feel the most neutral out of everyone.
see, it WAS heartwarming to me when it explains the concept of unconditional love of a father to a son. yes, it was very very very bleak, dark, scary etc.. remember that the reviews DID mention that. however, when they say that cormac still gives hope and stuff, its true when you think of it in literal terms (the food/clothes they found during their journey at one point) AND in moral terms (the hope that the love of a father/son will keep them both alive longer).
so yeah. Jay? i totally agree that it WAS little hard to read for me because of dialogue and the wording. for the difficulty understanding the wording, i just think i didn’t take the time. haha. i also had to read this for school.. so i guess it may be because i wasn’t trying to really understand and think about the book, i was just reading it really fast to understand what happened (for school). after reading a few reviews over the book, i realize now that i missed a LOTT from trying to read fast. i know that i’m going to read this again later when i have more time, and really think about what i’m reading, and i’m positive i’ll like it much more. :]
if you didn’t like the way the book was written.
i’m sorry. it’s your opinion. HOWEVER, criticizing the author’s STYLE of writing is just.. disrespectful. many people managed to recieve the right emotions he had in mind, so he did SOMETHING right. if you hate how it was written that much, you can write it yourselves :]
September 11th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
oh and by the way. in another review, it says a few things i thought really explain a few things.
-The sparseness of languages enhances the harshness of the situation. This is what makes it chilling, scary and very gripping.
-Language used can be called poetry in prose. One pauses at certain places to enjoy the sheer beauty of words. One feels sad. However, there is hope too at the end, a salvation of some kind.
the link for this review–> http://readingandmorereading.blogspot.com/2008/01/road-by-comac-mccarthy.html
October 17th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
I’m not quite done with this book but I think it is a very well written book. Obviously the people saying they don’t like it are no familiar with Raymond Carver and authors who use unorthodox ways of telling a story, minimal words, less punctuation. This isn’t because they don’t know how, it’s because they are really that good.
The novel is marvelous. It’s such a good book, sometimes it’s too strong for me to read, and I have to put it down and come back, because I can handle so much emotion. Anyway, read this book, it will tell you a lot about yourself.
October 20th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Literature is at a low point now. The Road isn’t bad, it’s not good either. I don’t understand readers who think this is untrodden territory, rarely explored. The Road is safe. It takes no risk. Spare prose? McCarthy excels at idiot prose, like the example given: “The woman when she saw him…man to man through all of time.” This is creative- workshopped to precision, yes, but it beats with a dull, tired, overworn cadence. He can’t dip back into the amateur well of creativity at his age, though. This is insipid stuff. I expect English teachers to like this immensely. Lit types will like it. SF readers will find it a yawn, over thirty years old. Ballard covered this ground with Vermilion Sands, a desolate landscape where things actually happen. If story is the vehicle for memory, this one is fated for oblivion.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:18 am
There are some hurts that you are thankful for; some hurts you risk only to conclude that you wouldn’t do it again.
I’m not sure if I liked the book (which is something of a first for me), but it certainly made an impact: the end haunts me. Maybe it shouldn’t have been the first book I read after becoming a father. It’s effective and memorable, but a light-hearted romp it is not.
It’s hard to come up with something new in the somewhat tired Post-apocalypse subgenre. The father-son take is new and well-done.
I prefer my heart-wrenching stories to reward me with some hope, transcendence or redemption. I hear there’s a movie on the way, I don’t know if I’d watch it. I’ve reached a point in life where there are some things I don’t want to experience, don’t want to understand, don’t want to feel. It might have been worth it the first time, but I don’t think I want to feel The Road again.
October 30th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
some critics say harsh,bleak,unforgiving……………
It semms to me a love story, A love of humanity and a warning of what may be lost.
November 10th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
rykard says they collapsed into cannibalism a little quickly. it had been years since it happened, so not quickly, no. all animals, birds and plants are dead and everything worth looting had been looted years before. it a gorgeously written cautionary tale. and, dare i say, accurate. if we do ever degenerate enough to kill off the world with bombs, then forever winter is what we will have and, like the woman, death would be more welcome than continuing to scrabble to survive.
November 20th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
I’ve just read this for the second time. It remains one of the most moving books I’ve ever read. I’m not surprised that a majority of the women who posted didn’t like it. McCarthy is very much a man’s writer, very much in tune with the man’s psyche. The Road exposes a man’s (better said, father’s) deepest need; that is the desire to be needed. That this book was dedicated to his own son, about the age of the boy in the book, suggests the possibility that McCarthy has or still struggles with such issues. What would he want his son to get from such a story is what we must ask ourselves. No father would dedicate just a bleak, hopeless, and dark tale to a son he loves. No, there is much more here, and it is not dark nor is it hopeless.
The first time I read this, I kept asking myself, why do they keep going? For what? There’s nothing left! For whom? There’s almost no one left! Early on there were hints of the coast being the place where they might find some relief, some peace. But when they arrived on the coast only to find more of the same desolation and death as they’d seen all along the road, what then compelled them to keep going? Why didn’t they give up like the mother? The most grim of circumstances, extreme odds against survival, and the constant fear of the unknown did not stop them. They just kept going.
But aren’t we confronted with the same question every day? What keeps us going? If we don’t ask ourselves these things, how can we be in touch with ourselves enough for any meaningful existence? Amid repeated disappointments, losses, and failures in life, don’t we ask ourselves, “Why should I go on?”
Don’t we often mislead ourselves to thinking that that promotion, or that house, or that car, or that tech toy, or whatever, will be our coast? Our place where we can finally rest and have peace? Then only to find that those things are only like everything else along the way? They are just as bleak as what we’ve left behind in order to obtain the next thing.
I don’t pretend to have the answers to such questions, and I’m certain when found, my answers will be different than yours. The Road shoves these questions in my face and makes me rethink why I keep getting up every day. I have to think at least partly my answer lies in my 3 sons, and in my wife. They are why I keep going. When no longer needed, I suspect one day I’ll simply lie down along the side of the road like the father, and drift off into a sleep, never to get up again. But before I do, I’ll leave my sons a final hope, a conviction, that if my sons concern themselves that a lone boy they’ve met along their way might be lost amongst the madness and depravity of the world, I’ll respond by telling them not to worry, “Goodness will find the boy. It always has. It will again.”
Hope indeed.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Did anyone sense a theme of Christianity in this book? I did. The dynamic of a relationship between father and son, sacrifice. The part which particularly struck me was when they had dounf the cellar full of food and were about to eat then the boy wanted to give thanks to the people that left it there. Just a bit of a christian undertone I think – I sincereley am moved and depply affected by this story.
Kellie
December 7th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
This book made me uncomfortable from the start: an excellent sign. If you’re not being moved, changed in some way, why read? For those of you who had a hard time understanding the love the dad had for his father, the dialogue, the sentence structures etc, all I can is, that’s pathetic. And reveals not only your IQ, but your conservative nature. I am a mother of two small boys, and I loved this book. I couldn’t read a book like this every day, but that doesn’t take away from how spectacular it is.
I wholeheartedly agree with the reviewer who said, “This book will tell you a lot about yourself.” I could not have offed myself, like the mother in this book. My love for my boys transcends everything. I would have been needed, and therefore, I would have stayed and done my best to ensure the survival of myself and my children. This is a book about unconditional love and the need to be needed. I did not see this as a book that depicts the worst of humanity, but the exact opposite. In an age in which fathers are represented (esp. on TV) as bafoons, it was refreshing to see a father portrayed as strong and brave for a change.
Jill
December 10th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
I could not put this haunting read down from the moment I picked it up. Even though I knew it would be bleak and heartwrenching, I felt compelled to read and read. At the end, I wept like a baby. I have not had a bood affect me like The Road in many years. I LOVED it–what child would not want a father like that. I HATED it–why did the father die?? I wanted the fairy tale, of course, and life just isn’t so. As a teacher of Advanced Placement English–both Language and Literature, I can see why many students would feel overwhelemed by the bleak portrayal of mankind. for those of us older and wiser, we might be stunned by the kindnesses of any mankind. It’s all about perspective. What makes the book so sensational is McCarthy’s ability to evoke so much pathos on so many different levels and from such a myriad of readers. I am no McCarthy, but with a Ph.D in English and as a veteran professor, I can say with certainty-this is beautifully written. The fragments and disjointed sentences–it’s called style. Any time form and content are wed this beautifully together in any medium and/or genre, it’s called ART. Kudos to McCarthy.
December 23rd, 2008 at 3:48 pm
I read this book in the course of two rainy,bleak,chilly days–the perfect setting to experience the shredding of my deepest emotions while trying to hold onto some semblance of mental equanimity. I’ve been affected by many books in many ways, but never have I had such a wholly enveloping experience as I was put through in the course of this story. I’ve read the criticisms above, and of course understand that this kind of book is not going to appease everyone. Personally, it struck such a chord of reverberating terror that I am still thrumming like a recovering meth junkie three days after finishing it. The very fact that the characters remained nameless made it all the more horrifying to me, since I immmediately began picturing my husband and our little 7 yr old grandson (who calls him Papa) in the roles. By the last few pages I was a shuddering, weeping, emptied husk…..pure bliss.
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:56 am
For those of you that hated it, you obviously have no respect for good literature. And Diane Cox, McCarthy wrote that way on PURPOSE. His fragmented and incorrect grammar represents the world in which they are living: cold, fragmented, yet never-ending. Try thinking outside of the box for once.
January 4th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
The book is not the everyday dandy day with pretty rainbows and lollipops. However, it creates a sense of value for survival of the fittest and the parental care for a son in this lost world.
January 10th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I used to read quite a lot before I was married and had my son. There has never been a book that has touched the core of my being has this has. The father-son theme of the book is first and foremost the story, everything else is details(horrific, grim, hopeless, and all encompassing as it is). I can only believe that those that are touched by it(which from all the feedback I get is 99% of those who have read it)are those that nature got right. Anyone who is not affected by this fable is dissconected in a new world way.
January 17th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
hey made it to the coast, the promised land, but the father died because he sinned in his lapsed morality, yet he died with hope in his heart for his son, his salvation. The boy was rewarded with a new hop via the new family.
February 13th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I read The Road in 2 days and could not stop thinking about it in between. The pacing of the novel is perfect, how McCarthy can paint such a beautifully descriptive scene and maintain an urgency to everything the father and son do is beyond me. There are moments you want to stop and stare at the world he has created, beautiful in its dark, cold, searing blanket of ash, but you move on down “The Road” knowing that movement is your only chance for survival. Few books, videogames, movies, etc can create such a sense of tension and sustain it throughout. McCarthy is a modern marvel of fiction. For those above that did not like the book, I challenge you to go back to page 108 (right before they break the lock and enter the dank basement filled with “captives”) and re-read that scene and the 2 that follow, ending with the son’s “We won’t ever eat anyone will we? Because we’re the good guys right?” If after reading it again that scene doesn’t affect you then you have every right to dismiss the book, but personally, it haunts me and this was the first book I read that I truly wished I could read in the dark, blank cold of night without light. Can’t wait to read it again.
February 15th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Those who are weak don’t fight.
Those who are stronger might fight for an hour.
Those who are stronger still might fight for many years.
The strongest fight their whole life.
They are the indispensable ones. – B. Brecht
This is a powerful and compelling book of despair, hunger, good and bad, hope and foremost love – as the key to survival in life. Why do we go one despite impossible odds and the dark aspects of life? We do it for love for others and ourselves. I have never read a more moving story of love between a father and son! It moved me to tears! By the way, I think the mother also showed her love – and gave the ultimate sacrifice – her life – so that the father and son could concentrate on themselves, their survival and there lives. In the end, there would be enough bullets for the two who are left. The mother was strong enough to give her life for them – out of love! The father (and mother) gave everything for their son and instilled hope and the “fire” in him. What greater legacy can there be for a child? The father (and mother) gave everything for their son and instilled hope and the “fire” in him. What greater legacy can there be for a child? In the memory and the “talks” with his father, his parents achieved immortality and the ultimate affection – the remembrance and a place in the heart of the boy.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:46 pm
love this book
March 19th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
One of the worst books I have ever read. its a great story line, but i prefer to read books in engish. The road uses words and puts a period at the end. its not a sentence!! Tools, hammers, nails. is not a sentence, it makes no sense. this book is also insanely frekin boring. theres no point to it, by the point the man and the boy are at, i definetly would have commited suicide by then. nothing happens. they just walk, sometimes they find people, sometimes they find things they need, but most of the time they suffer. who wants to read about suffering w/o any hope at all? not me. it makes me depressed. so if u do like this book, i just hope you dont think itll end like that, because that would suck. terribly. < that is another example of a not a sentence sentence in the road.
book is horrible i would say don’t waste your time reading it because then u might want to relearn how to form a sentence!
April 4th, 2009 at 1:04 am
LOVED this book. It was written not with words, but with the paint of an expert artist. an abstract book that leaves the reader to fill in the blanks with his own imaginings of this dark and bleak world of despair.
Absolutely touching, and heartbreaking at the same time. The love and dedication of a father for his son is beautifully illustrated by the author. They were the only things in the “world entire” that kept eachother going, and in the end, the father would always be with the son, in his heart. (tears)
April 17th, 2009 at 11:12 am
I was there. It’s as if you walk side by side with the boy and his father, weakening as the story goes by. coughing together with the father, asking yourself as time goes by, what is hope?
The lack of words in this book give it its true power – silence. Cormac’s ability to fill the readers with emptiness bring us the the right tools for handeling Mccarthy’s world.
I wish to thank cormac unike and simple writing.
April 25th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Completely mesmerizing. I raced through this book and couldn’t put it down. I’m bored by a lot of current fiction … much of it feels precise but bloodless to me. But this book was beautiful in its ugliness. I don’t know how else to say it. When I finished I wept. Days later, it still haunts me.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
This is certainly one of the best books I have ever read. I just finished and already look forward to reading it again… tonight!
May 8th, 2009 at 3:51 am
This was my first McCarthy but won’t be my last. I agree with John of Sparta (way back) that it’s the best fiction of the new millenium. Others have compared McCarthy with Melville; I would put him in the same class, without question. I reckon that centuries from now, (if we still have literature), people will still marvel at McCarthy’s mastery of language. There aren’t that many writers who, like McCarthy, would construct a sentence from a single word, but doing so demonstrates one thing without question. Economy. What some people commenting here don’t seem to understand is that in writing, the number of words counts less than which ones are used and where they’re placed in relation to each other. The spaces between words are there to be inhabited by both the imagination and the emotions of the reader. McCarthy is a superb craftsman and demonstrates a profound understanding of this relationship between author, language and audience.
I have since read and enjoyed tremendously “All the Pretty Horses” and “Blood Meridian” and now have “Cities of the Plain” and “The Crossing” lined up. If you found “The Road” challenging, try “Blood Meridian”. That will be to McCarthy as “Moby Dick” is to Melville.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:17 am
I haven’t read the book yet, but I just saw the trailer of the movie starring Viggo Mortenson. I was blown away and can’t wait to see it. Which makes me wonder whether it would be a good idea to read the book first. I mean, what if that makes me enjoy the movie less? But then if I saw the movie first and read the book later, would I be able to fully enjoy the book?
Dilemma, dilemma.
May 24th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
McCarthy is our greatest living author. I am really shocked to discover that people exist that read the book but didn’t think it was masterful. Some of these critics demonstrate through their comments that they are primarily concerned with sentence construction. Others appear to understand the brilliant use of language, but can’t fathom the beauty and hope that the story reveals. I feel sorry for the readers who didn’t understand the emotions that McCarthy conjures. These poor souls are living a purely animal existence. The Road is biblical in its power and depth. I cried like a baby at the end. They were sad but joyful tears.
June 1st, 2009 at 7:58 pm
i had to read this book for an english assignment. My teacher gave a rough description of the book and at first i thought i wouldnt like it….i was wrong. I found the book to be inspiring and make me rethink of what is important in the world we live in. This is my first McCarthy novel and i hope i enjoy the rest of them as much as i did the first
June 21st, 2009 at 10:58 am
Back again after re-reading it in anticipation of the movie.
Some of the comments here are odd … criticizing an author’s style is disrespectful? Since when? All is fair game when a reader reviews a book … storytelling and style go hand in hand. If a reader finds that the story, characters, and terse writing resonate with them, that’s great. Others will be put off by the bleakness and/or the quirky style. Few will be neutral. I think the book comes across better after a second or third read … not less chilling, but the subtleties of the characters and their relationships are more apparent.
However, I do wish he’d stick to proper punctuation!
August 6th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Back again after a few re-reads. This novel is a masterpiece, a post-modern fable. McCarthy’s previous novels contain passages of such lyrical “rightness” that they shine off the page as though lit from within. His gift is the ability to create landmark paragraphs that ring absolutely “true”; the attentive reader will always return to them simply because they are “perfect” writing. In “The Road”, with its unrelentingly, uncompromisingly stark physical and emotional landscape, such lyrically intense passages can have a brutalising effect on the reader that could perhaps be a little too much for some to take. McCarthy has such a complete mastery of language that he takes no prisoners when he launches an assault upon his audience. His aim in “The Road” is to show the reader the very best of humanity by contrasting it with the very worst and doing it in the most amoral, depraved and desperate setting imaginable. Downside? Well, people are gonna baulk. Upside? Once the reader properly engages with the work, he cannot fail to undertake a profound emotional journey along with the protagonists. As for punctuation … phooey … Cormac can do as he likes. But then again, I’m biased; I’d happily be Ol’ Cormac’s dog …
August 7th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
this book made me cry soo hard!
September 2nd, 2009 at 4:12 pm
I wouldn’t get too upset if there are those that don’t like it or don’t get it. Not for everyone. there were times when I wasn’t ready for something only to come back to it years later and finally get it. Me I loved it. Offputting was the conversation between the man and the wife and a little bit too much Waiting for Godot with ELY, that seemed out of place to me. I did not find the punctuation a problem at all. Each paragraph is like a nugget of gold. Each page packs a wollop. It drains you. It made me think about my own relationship with my children.
I like what Jason posted earlier about how the Road taps into the man’s psyche…such visceral emotions, such deep profound moments that are shared between a father and his son. All the bleakness and horror and hopelessness that engulfs these characters and the world they live in and yet…there is hope isn’t there
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:15 am
Just finished this book and cannot praise it highly enough. Was in tears by the end (something that has never happened to me reading any other book). As a father of two young sons and someone who has faced (succesfully so far)the spectre of cancer last year the connection between father and son was overwhelming at times for me and forced me to revisit those feelings I had a year previous when I was sick (feelings I had probably suppressed at the time, not wanting to upset my family anymore than they already were). The bond between father and son, despite everything which is happening to them, transcends everything else around them and the father lives on in his child even after he is dead. Read this book and realise what is really important in our lives – our children, family and friends.
September 8th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Totally stunned by The Road. Thankfully some of commentors here AREN’T on the Booker Prize committee. For those posters who found the grammatical constructs difficult to understand, I’m sorry but the way that McCarthy can portray such depth with so few words is breathtaking writing. Punctuation not required. Perhaps you should stick with Harry Potter or the Twilight series.
I agree with everything Damir and Ryan et al said. If only Cormac McCarthy had written the Bible, it’s be a darn sight shorter and hell of lot more interesting and profound.
October 4th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Interesting book.
A bit boring because it is kinda repetitive.
But this book was a very good philosophical book about family values and makes us think about what we live for and make us question ourselves about our values. Also, i think the author did not intend to make this a well structured and well written but to really pass on his message.
October 6th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Loved the book – but a few questions…
Why were they going to the coast? Is the answer because that is where life first started – the primordial soup? The thinking that life could flourish there once again? What did the road symbolize? Life itself?
October 9th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Its rare for me to be so affected by a book. After finishing ‘The Road’ I felt physically and mentally exhausted. As if I trudged along in the desolation with them. Truly moving. This type of literature is definitley not for the Harry Potter crowd. Dark and inverted. Wonderfully depressing, if that makes any sense. The relationship between father and son set against such a ghastly backdrop only proves to deepen the emotion. This is one beautiful piece of literature. As for the punctuation and style of writing, once you find McCarthy’s rythm this book flows wonderfully.
October 19th, 2009 at 7:43 am
For me this was not an easy book to read, but on reflection it is brilliant. It actually physically affected me, as in it sickened me to the core the terrible way they had to live their life. It describes a living hell for existence, and tapped into a deep fear of that. When humanity is either non existent or something to run away from that is terrifying. It made me feel a renewed surge of love and gratitude for other human beings and all the positive things we can do to help each other.
Its very well written and draws you in and you do believe its real.
I wanted it to be a happier ending but kind of knew all along that it wouldn’t be as it wasn’t that kind of book!
Maybe the boy could survive and have a life worth living? hard to imagine. but why do stories always have to have happy endings anyway?
It certainly affected me and touched me for quite a long time afterwards.
I think the genius of this book is that you kind of physically feel it, its certainly different to anything else I’ve ever read.
This definitely touched a different emotional part of me, I think because its on such a huge scale, we are talking about the end of the world here, and yet we only care cos its seen through the eyes of two people.
October 21st, 2009 at 5:37 am
To quote “The big Chill”: Sometimes you just have to let art flow all over you. This book is a little masterpiece.
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:53 pm
McCarthy is one of this country’s best writers authoring nine novels!
What kind of word is authoring???
October 25th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Read it a couple of weeks ago in two days. Gave it to my son; he read it in a few days. Told my brother about it – he finished it in a single night. His comment, left as a voice mail, sums it up best. “About The Road. Wow. What did you just have me read? Call me, let’s talk.” And it’s not like we don’t talk all the time.
I cried like a baby at the end. My son, tough guy that he is, did as well. We both said it is sad beyond words. My brother, otoh, didn’t. He found it uplifting. The devotion, the stripped-of-everything-extraneous model of a good father. I see his point, and he’s right. The Man is the essential father. A demonstration in words of what can be. The story is sad, but that’s the way of the world, of life, even without the end of the world being upon us. (What’s the saying? “Life is veil of tears?”) The story is also uplifting, nothing so blunt as ‘a call’ to be good, but a reflection of the capability of good.
Not a writer, so have no thoughts on his style (though it worked for me, us, in that we all found it beautiful to read), but my opinion is that McCarthy has written about the essence of good in humans. And for some reason that makes me want to burst into tears.
October 29th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
I read the book last night in one sitting. (Late at night with no one around except the cat- brave gal I am!) It is a powerful book, no two ways about it. Now I’ve just read many, many reviews, 95% of which are glowing. The other 5% hate it and call Cormac McCarthy a bore.
At first I was disturbed at the total collapse of the rules of grammar and English. Strunk & White would be appalled. The more I read, the more I realized McCarthy did this to make a point. That point, as I see it, is that all the “rules” of the world and society had collapsed. Disappeared. In a post-apocalyptic world the only rule is survival. By dispensing with quote marks, etc., McCarthy illustrates the world as bleak and sparse. On purpose.
October 30th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
I can’t wait til the world ends so I don’t have to use punctuation any more.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Likely many of those who’ve presented comments over the past couple of years didn’t come of literary/dramatic age in the era of Jean Paul Satre, Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, or Franz Kafka from an even earlier era. While McCarthy isn’t attempting to channel their voices into his writing, The Road pays homage to his existentialist outlook in a purer form than his other oft referenced novels. The reading is astringent, true enough, yet it remains true to the hard straight path (road) he and numerous writers before him chose to follow. What’s more, the end of this story — the man’s death from the effects of the past — leads directly into a muted sunrise for the boy when he (purposely) encounters the man who wears the “grey and yellow ski parka” whose “mouth worked imperfectly, and when he smiled”. Don’t worry, be happy, enjoy this literary trip.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
could not put this book down. first cormac mccarthy book i have read and i plan to read others! reminded me of books that were mandatory reading in high school, but that i could not appreciate at the time,(hard to pick up) ie “a seperate peace”; “lord of the flies”; “the pearl”; etc. 25 yrs after graduating high school these are the one’s that still stick with me, in fact i have gone back and started rereading them again! they are better as an adult. this is one of those books. you can only empathize with the father’s situation if you are one yourself, the love you have for your child is that powerful.
November 24th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
This is by far one of the best books I have ever read. The praise has all been given before, but somehow cracking tearful smiles myself in such a bleak world is no small feat. I loved the minimal use of words and punctuation, matched the world that the two lived in. The light within the two kept the dark world lit. Absolutely beautiful.
December 1st, 2009 at 1:20 am
Metaphor – look it up… it is not Mad Max or anything else than a father facing his son in a world gone ethically, morally, and physically bankrupt (global warming, Bernie Madoff, Rwanda, Cambodia – thinking Pol Pot) = this story could be any one of us on any road handing over what we have wrought to our children.
December 9th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Extremely moving experience…especially for a father. The man is an admirable character, one I’m not sure I could measure up to under those circumstances. McCarthy does make you think about the “good guys” and the meaning of our everyday life. Sometimes, as the man says, the bravest thing you do is get up in the morning!
December 19th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
QUOTE from the book:
“The blackness he woke to on those nights was sightless and impenatrable. A blackness to hurt your ears with listening. Often he had to get up. No sound but the wind in the bare and blackened trees. He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings. An old chronicle. To seek out the upright. No fall but preceded by a declination. He took great marching steps into the nothingness, counting them against his return. Eyes closed, arms oaring. Upright to what? Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars were common satellite. Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yet know it must.”
Silly.
December 21st, 2009 at 5:47 am
I was a little surprised to read so many negative comments about sentence structure and punctuation and indeed boringness or heartlessness, when this book is terribly easy to read and profoundly emotional, so, not alienating or pretentious; if a writer is inside his own words and feelings, then we are there with him, and I suspect that the difficulties people may have with this book is they don’t know how to read it, and may also be somewhat discordant from their own emotional reality. It’s just fine to chuck conventional sentence structure out of the window if you’re inside the soul of the apocalypse, and this man is, so where a less intense and patronising writer would fail, McCarthy is simply a poet. This is a poetic book, and can be written no other way.
That said, and I have no doubt that this is a masterpiece, I have constant difficulties with McCarthy because his landscapes and feelings and needs and behaviour are never, ever mine. He seems to write of souls that are drifted out into worlds I have no understanding of, and how they speak and what they want are not so much bleak and uncompromising, but meditations on a perspective I just don’t share; this may very well be to do with a particular form of masculinity, though I have no trouble with Shakespeare. McCarthy is undoubtedly a genius and this is a passionate book, not to mention probably quite true as the human race are constantly doing things like this, and forever will, and it’s wonderful to read someone who sculpts language so well, but it’s all just so basic. I actually preferred this one to All The Pretty Horses, which is meant to be romantic, but there are always these characters in a McCarthy book, building fires and collecting branches and toughing it out in hostile conditions with bits of terse bracken and uncomfortable bedding with but a rag of hope to their back, and personally – though I’m going to be reading The Road over and over because it’s like some volcano, and lacerating – there’s no way I could personally exist in that book or any other one he’s written unless I was a dead tree. I feel for those trees.
The other thing about this book is that you really see what it all looks like, the rain and the snow and these burnt houses with the paint peeling off them; it’s so visual. And the style is mesmeric and incantatory, suitable of course to be that way with death in every breath. But what’s that fish doing at the end? I though nothing lived and all was over? And it seems to have the whole world on it, on its scales, which indicates promise and rebirth. He’s a softy, that Cormac McCarthy, I’d have killed off everyone. He’s created some sort of chance amongst all the rubble, but I’m not so sure. I am not at all sure that the validity of human love and Grace is but a stick in the wind against the power of human evil and stupidity, and some of the comments made against this book will bear me out on that one, because they’re really an attack on Art and sensitivity, and when placed right in the great flame of great art, which this book actually is, and still continue to fail to see anything, well, we need no apocalypse to weep for the human race, something I spend most of time doing anyway.
I quite liked the love in this book, found it beautiful and unlikely. The whole book’s like that really. It reminds me of the work of certain artists where the images look like dead grass or have no intrinsic aesthetic purchase but stay and stay. That in itself is McCarthy’s greatest claim to distinction, that his pictures are memorable and imprint themselves on the mind. I wish I’d written it really but I am just not the type. And I do think it was very clever of him to create such lasting images using such a limited palate – no colour anywhere, all black and white and grey – ‘casket black’ he said at one point – like an etching. It’s really a sequence of drawings this book, with the horror and the love imprinted on every one.
December 21st, 2009 at 6:54 am
P.S. I’ve just checked the fish bit and even though it’s only a memory, as I suggested it wasn’t, and I think the memory is meant to eclipse itself as something that no longer is, my point still stands, as an explicit note of futurity, or maybe even something not so much that ripens against devastation but exists beyond Time, so we’ve moved beyond the parameters of the book and into the ineluctable.
December 28th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
This was an interesting book. I read it in a day, but why it so compelled me is a mystery.
The story was good, certainly. The idea is excellent. I really enjoy post-apocalyptic stories. The grammar and sentence structure choices the author chose, however, were not really my style. At first I overlooked them and kept going, but, as the story progressed, they began distracting me. I’m not criticizing his style, just saying it didn’t work for me.
I think this book is a cult book, to be perfectly honest, similar to the “Twilight” series and “The Shack”. People go crazy over them and so, unconsciously, readers instantly love the book(s), not seeing flaws.
Overall, the story was intriguing and realistic. Unfortunately, the writing style detracted significantly from the value of the story.
** out of ****.
December 29th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
I loved the review. Except the end. You write: “An example is near the end (and this is giving nothing away) when the boy is taken in by a family living near the road along the oceanfront after the death of his father” You gave it all away!!!
January 9th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
Ok.
Let Me try to clarify some things for the people who still haven’t gotten the idea here.
-Punctuation: to begin with, who cares how the book is punctuated? It reads. I had no problem reading it, i didn’t have to stop and go back or double read any sentences. you just have to read it all the way through. Its not a book you can look up and look back down to. And for all of oyu that say he uses terrible English grammar and etc., i challenge you this: Do you not text and instead of putting “So where do you want to go out to eat tonight?” do most of you not put “whr u wnna go 2 eat 2nite?” in this day and age, i find that compared to the majority of the worlds grammar, this is excellent. even so, he did this to add more effect, which is a rare thing in literature when they actually literally use the words on the pagegs to make it a more dynamic reading experience.
-The Setting: what? you people cant handle a dark and not-so-rainbows-and-unicorns setting in a book/movie? Not everything in life has a happy ending. All of us can attest. I’ve been to places in my career that would make you wish you were in the book. This isn’t a faux-landscape. Take away the ashes and places like this really do exist. Smaller scale, mind you, but they do. And someone waaaaay at the top of the reviews mentioned jumping to cannibalism early…well the boy was born a few days after the end of the world happened. Given the context i would assume he is 10-13. That’s 10-13 years for humanity to lose all hope, ethics,morals, etc.
The Plot-Maybe some people just don’t like a nothing but happy go lucky fairytale. Do you really want to read a book where the apocalypse happens, but everyone finds away to flourish in little biospheres and dance around playing harps and laughing, having a good time? I don’t. I want to see what such an event can bring out in people. The lengths people would go to in order to survive and protect their own, but also what compassion and comradeship can develop. I want to see how far the hate of one human can be, but also how merciful they can be through all the maliciousness they have been subject to. (Example:The outcast who tries to steal their cart on the beach, and how the father strips him and leaves him there to die for it. Then takes his clothes back and leaves them on the street.)
You guys aren’t misunderstanding the book. Your just not trying hard enough to understand it. You negative reviewers are speaking about Literature etc. like you are experts who have been studying the subject your whole life, but I’m a 19 year old US Marine(yes, that shows a slight lack of intelligence :P all you devil dogs know what I’m saying.) and I see things perfectly clear. You have to be an outside of the box thinker. McCarthy is no Tolkien :) remind you (Yes, Tolkien got MAD involved in story line, history of the plot, etc. That’s what i mean by that) HeMcCarthy doesn’t need to go into the details. The book isn’t called ‘The Apocalypse’ or ‘The proper use of grammar in the English language’ or ‘A Book That You Would Think Is Depressing, but it Actually Ends Really Positively’ its The Road. Its a post apocalyptic story about a son and father trying to survive and keep each other going through their love because they are afraid if they are gone they will leave the other ‘in the dark’ (particularly the father.) cmon you guys. I just graduated High School a year and a half ago and I understand these concepts. If you cannot relate to the emotions in this book, you haven’t lived life long enough.
Pure Love in the bond of a father and son. Pure survival instincts and the will to kill all who threaten. The willingness to die, but the drive to keep alive. The battle of right and wrong and how easy it is to totter on that borderline. Good book. I sent it to my Fiance to read, and i’m going to experience it again once i get back home.
January 15th, 2010 at 10:28 am
The Road is an incredible book, whilst reading it I saw it as a harrowing story of deep emotion. Only since finishing it have I begun to realize some of the themes of morality, hope and humanity that the book questions and exposes. It is Mccarthys genius that he has allowed the space within the novel for the reader to make there own interpretations on these themes.
Strangely, i almost did not read it, I found the first few pages hard going and it requires you to completely engage with the book, if you don’t then it probably would be ‘boring’ (as some have commented here)…but it is a fantastically rewarding read – I read a comment that ‘everything the modern novel can be is here’. Surely true.
January 25th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
I have to stand in line with the disappointed minority. I did complete the book, and I understood the theme.
Upon completion, I thought it would be kinder to toss it in the garbage rather than pass it along.
The book would have relayed its ideas with the bonus of cutting repetitive images had he written it as a short story. There are only so many ways to trek through monotonous ashlands, hide from brigands, and seek hidden caches of food. No need to carry on about it for chapter after chapter.
As for the theme, those higher human virtues came a bit late in the story, since society was already kaput. So the guy loves his son. So what? Most people love their children and even value them above themselves. Why this is suddenly profound in a post apocalyptic setting where most other suvivors are painted as baby-eating road warriors (by design, I might add) eludes me.
Then there were the gaping holes in believability. There were many of those. How many years did ‘the man’ and ‘the boy’ stay in one place? Eating what? Drinking what? Then they’re suddenly slurping out of cans that must have been a decade old?
No, I really don’t care if the MFA’s out there are waxing orgasmic over this spot of lit-ruh-chur. If a writer breaks the spell of credibility in genre fiction by leaving big holes where they simply don’t want to come up with explanations, the effect is the same in non-genre works like The Road.
I didn’t care for the gimmicky style, either. Apparently, McCarthy has decided that punctuation is for lesser mortals. Funny me, I thought we use punctuation, speech tags, and other other such gew gaws for good reasons.
January 27th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
As a 60 yr old recent retiree, my free time includes more reading. The Road was read in two sittings. I felt so connected to the man and his son. The story was so disturbing that I cried at the end. I guess it is all about
the human condition.
I looked through the eyes of the father (I have two sons and a daughter) and saw an instinct for love and protection
that isn’t taught. It is hard to imagine how dire the future
holds and to “keep the fire inside”.
It is interesting that the movie was made, played for a very
short time and no DVD release.
I just gave the book to my son to read. What a book!
January 30th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Someone should probably point out that the post-apocalyptic novel by John Wyndham, or whatever his name was that particular day, is surely the Chrysalids, not the Day of the Triffids.
February 8th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Simply one of the best books in modern literature. I was so moved and affected by this book that I simply could not pick up another book for a few days. It took me that long to get over The Road. The book was, to me, both soul crushing and spiritually uplifting. Once I read the final pages, I took a few moment to let myself weep….and that is rare indeed for me.
I can understand how this book is not some people’s “cup of tea”, but what I cannot understand is nit-picking the man’s writing style. Step outside your middle school language arts class mentality and give credit to something different, unique, and outside the standardized box.