Mass Market Paperback, 287 pages
English language
Published Nov. 11, 2008 by Vintage International.
The searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.
The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which a father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. (back cover)
The story was good. The dialogue was annoying. The ending was bull.
I love this book for reasons that not many other people will love this book, because I'm not sure McCarthy intended for it to be read the way I do, and it's not that I'm some smart guy, I just had an angle on it that made it important to me. To me, it's a story about being a father to a little boy. You guide him, help him along, teach him, let him learn on his own. The premise here, as you probably know, is that the civilized world has been destroyed, and there is literally nothing left. What do you do then? What McCarthy thinks you do is to keep him moving forward. That's it. That's all. You can't do anything else. Well, you could stay where you are, but then you both are sure to die, more quickly, maybe than you're sure to die if you move. …
I love this book for reasons that not many other people will love this book, because I'm not sure McCarthy intended for it to be read the way I do, and it's not that I'm some smart guy, I just had an angle on it that made it important to me. To me, it's a story about being a father to a little boy. You guide him, help him along, teach him, let him learn on his own. The premise here, as you probably know, is that the civilized world has been destroyed, and there is literally nothing left. What do you do then? What McCarthy thinks you do is to keep him moving forward. That's it. That's all. You can't do anything else. Well, you could stay where you are, but then you both are sure to die, more quickly, maybe than you're sure to die if you move. You help him move forward. And there are consequences to you, as the father: you don't really teach him to survive without you, because you know he won't. So you move him forward and you (barely) nurture his hope and you comfort him not for his sake, but for yours.
When there is literally nothing else, you parent that little boy because it's all you have. Essentially, you're using him. He stays alive in the bargain, but is that a real boon? (Mom didn't think so, remember.)
What does any of this mean to a world that hasn't been obliterated? It's an exploration of the very bottom of fatherhood. Whatever else we do can go away; the one thing that never will is that we parent our little boy because he is all we have. It's shameful and selfish and human and poignant and the best book I've ever read.
This is the most chilling novel I have ever read. Please do yourself a favor and read this. Seriously.
Beautiful and heartbreaking. I read it in one sitting, I couldn't put it down.
A must read.
A must read.
"No one wants to be here, and no one wants to leave."
Cormac McCarthy has a fascinating style. There's not much action in this hard and cruel journey, but I was very taken up with it. McCarthy illustrates a will to survive that doesn't seem reasonable or logical, but that does seem very real.
And the ending was a surprise to me
What a fascinatingly dark book. Probably more of a 3.5 star book, but the writing was heart-wrenchingly gloomy and sparse, and so I'll move it up a notch.
The Road tells the story of "the man" and "the boy" - never named in the book. And they are on a quest to the sea in the east, and then south, in the hopes of finding the "good people", many (7? 8?) years after some undescribed apocalypse left the landscape in ashes, and small bands of survivors, usually cannibals, searching for food. The man and boy dodge trouble and continue on The Road.
And really, that's the entire story. What exactly happened isn't every clear, maybe even The Man doesn't know it. They have a few adventures and the book ends. I guess that was one strike against it - I just didn't feel like there was a point to the …
What a fascinatingly dark book. Probably more of a 3.5 star book, but the writing was heart-wrenchingly gloomy and sparse, and so I'll move it up a notch.
The Road tells the story of "the man" and "the boy" - never named in the book. And they are on a quest to the sea in the east, and then south, in the hopes of finding the "good people", many (7? 8?) years after some undescribed apocalypse left the landscape in ashes, and small bands of survivors, usually cannibals, searching for food. The man and boy dodge trouble and continue on The Road.
And really, that's the entire story. What exactly happened isn't every clear, maybe even The Man doesn't know it. They have a few adventures and the book ends. I guess that was one strike against it - I just didn't feel like there was a point to the book or the characters, so I felt like the author could play at whatever he wanted to do. So I was on tenterhooks waiting for disaster to fall. But much like [[book:The Cider House Rules|4687], where I was just waiting for the bizarre, awful, Irving tragedy to crash down, it never did and I guess that's a good thing. I also had some trouble suspending disbelief, wondering just how some of it would really work in such a desolate landscape.
The ending was a little too trite, after all that gloom. But it was a good read, and the narrator, Tom Stechschulte, did a real good job of it. Sometimes, I wouldn't get out of the car as I awaited the next paragraph! Read it, but prepare to be depressed.
I loved Blood Meridian so I decided to read another one of McCarthy's books and I wasn't disappointed. Part of me loves the post-apocalyptic story type, but it really has a much different feel from books like The Postman and McCarthy's style really works well for the material that it deals with.
Wow, that was an amazing book. I love the atmospherics through out the whole book, and the interpersonal connections between the "man" and the son are brilliant.
I saw the movie, I knew what I was getting myself into, it's bleak, but somehow it gives me hope. Maybe it's just the reminder that despite everything else, the plants are still growing. We aren't eating each other yet, and that's a cold comfort. But I think that the book--moreso than the movie--gives you the impression that the boy would not go on without his father, so when he does, almost without hesitation, it's surprisingly uplifting.
This was a poorly written good story.
I probably would have given it four stars if the author would have used such exotic writing conventions as quotes when people speak, chapter breaks, verbs in more than half the sentences, and character names (at several points it's impossible to tell who he's talking about or who's speaking). Or if he wouldn't have used double line breaks between just about every paragraph, even when there was no time jump between them. Or if there weren't long annoying paragraphs describing the most mundane actions. Or if some of the more poetic lines didn't seem completely out of place (and artificial). And though one of the praising blurbs about the book said something about his wonderful vocabulary, I found it distracting because some of the words he uses probably haven't been used by anyone else in the English-speaking world for 50 years. I am …
This was a poorly written good story.
I probably would have given it four stars if the author would have used such exotic writing conventions as quotes when people speak, chapter breaks, verbs in more than half the sentences, and character names (at several points it's impossible to tell who he's talking about or who's speaking). Or if he wouldn't have used double line breaks between just about every paragraph, even when there was no time jump between them. Or if there weren't long annoying paragraphs describing the most mundane actions. Or if some of the more poetic lines didn't seem completely out of place (and artificial). And though one of the praising blurbs about the book said something about his wonderful vocabulary, I found it distracting because some of the words he uses probably haven't been used by anyone else in the English-speaking world for 50 years. I am amazed that this book was published as-is.
This is the first book I've read by Cormac McCarthy, and I really enjoyed it. I read it in less than a day. His staccato style and use of subject-deficient sentences defines the pace of the story and fits the theme of traveling both wearily and warily down an endless, all-but-hopeless road.
McCarthy excels at describing the immediate: the dust on the road before them, the squeaking of the wheel on the shopping cart, the father's automatic attempt to avoid answering the questions asked by the son and the subsequent yielding to the inane, godless, yet ultimately serene truth. There is little to remember and even less to dream about, and neither father nor son do much more than move forward.
The Road is, of course, subject to the commonality of the metaphor. It is easy to analogize the road--the gray, ash-besotted, vagrant- and thief-infested road--to the path that one …
This is the first book I've read by Cormac McCarthy, and I really enjoyed it. I read it in less than a day. His staccato style and use of subject-deficient sentences defines the pace of the story and fits the theme of traveling both wearily and warily down an endless, all-but-hopeless road.
McCarthy excels at describing the immediate: the dust on the road before them, the squeaking of the wheel on the shopping cart, the father's automatic attempt to avoid answering the questions asked by the son and the subsequent yielding to the inane, godless, yet ultimately serene truth. There is little to remember and even less to dream about, and neither father nor son do much more than move forward.
The Road is, of course, subject to the commonality of the metaphor. It is easy to analogize the road--the gray, ash-besotted, vagrant- and thief-infested road--to the path that one chooses through life. The likeness is perhaps starker and more defined for the utter lack of reference to such an analogy. But McCarthy overcomes the obvious with a simple lack of presumption.
Struggled on the 4 or 5 star rating. Went with 5 becaue I had a hard time putting it down in the end. Again, when will we get the 1/2 star system?
This novel starts out slow, but it pulls you in and does not let go. The story is simple, very simple (spoiler, sort of). It is little more than a father and his son trying to survive in a world that has literally fallen to pieces around them. They travel down a road in an attempt to find a safe place. It sounds like so little, but the story is full of the most basic human emotions and the reader will have an easy time experiencing them all.
It took a long time to decide what to rate this book, but I've finally decided that it works. The power in this book is not the story itself, but what it makes you think.
The Road follows a father and son in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The follow the road, scavenging for what little they can to survive. The writing style swings wildly between vivid, haunting descriptions of the wasted landscape, and banal, dry conversations between the father and son. Despite the colorful language used to describe the landscape, it still gets repetitive quickly as it's all the same - a barren, deserted wasteland.
Rather than a detractor, this depressing monotony reinforces what the lives of the father and son have become. Every day is the same, every day a struggle to survive. There is nothing to look forward to, only varying levels of suckiness.
I tend to be very …
It took a long time to decide what to rate this book, but I've finally decided that it works. The power in this book is not the story itself, but what it makes you think.
The Road follows a father and son in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The follow the road, scavenging for what little they can to survive. The writing style swings wildly between vivid, haunting descriptions of the wasted landscape, and banal, dry conversations between the father and son. Despite the colorful language used to describe the landscape, it still gets repetitive quickly as it's all the same - a barren, deserted wasteland.
Rather than a detractor, this depressing monotony reinforces what the lives of the father and son have become. Every day is the same, every day a struggle to survive. There is nothing to look forward to, only varying levels of suckiness.
I tend to be very empathic with characters, wondering what I would do in their situation. The road fed that in spades, presenting many situations of very gray morality. A very depressing book, but still good.
