feezus reviewed The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Review of 'The Road' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
The story was good. The dialogue was annoying. The ending was bull.
320 pages
English language
Published Dec. 14, 2019 by Pan Macmillan.
Road
4 stars
(374 reviews)
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. ([source][1])
scifijack reviewed The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Review of 'The Road' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
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.
Rainer reviewed The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Review of 'The Road' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
This is the most chilling novel I have ever read. Please do yourself a favor and read this. Seriously.
samanthaleigh15 reviewed The Road (Oprah's Book Club) by Cormac McCarthy (Oprah's Book Club (57))
Review of "The Road (Oprah's Book Club)" on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Beautiful and heartbreaking. I read it in one sitting, I couldn't put it down.
Stephen Hayes reviewed The Road by Cormac McCarthy
None
4 stars
I suppose this counts as one of those dystopian "end of civilisation" books, describing the life of survivors after some disaster has wiped out most of the human race. It's a genre on its own, and two of my favourites in the genre are [b:A canticle for Leibowitz|164154|A Canticle for Leibowitz|Walter M. Miller Jr.|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172331601s/164154.jpg|250975] by [a:Walter M. Miller|4085374|Walter M. Miller|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg] and [b:Earth abides|93269|Earth Abides|George R. Stewart|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171253295s/93269.jpg|1650913] by [a:George Stewart|53501|George R. Stewart|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-M-50x66.jpg].
Unlike those two, which describe some form of community, [b:The road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266449195s/6288.jpg|3355573] describes the journey of a father and son, whose main object is to avoid most of the humans they meet. One is not told their names or ages, though the boy appears to be about 6-8 years old, and there are hints that he was born after the disaster, and so had known no other life. Their location isn't described either, though it is somewhere in …
I suppose this counts as one of those dystopian "end of civilisation" books, describing the life of survivors after some disaster has wiped out most of the human race. It's a genre on its own, and two of my favourites in the genre are [b:A canticle for Leibowitz|164154|A Canticle for Leibowitz|Walter M. Miller Jr.|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172331601s/164154.jpg|250975] by [a:Walter M. Miller|4085374|Walter M. Miller|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg] and [b:Earth abides|93269|Earth Abides|George R. Stewart|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171253295s/93269.jpg|1650913] by [a:George Stewart|53501|George R. Stewart|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-M-50x66.jpg].
Unlike those two, which describe some form of community, [b:The road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266449195s/6288.jpg|3355573] describes the journey of a father and son, whose main object is to avoid most of the humans they meet. One is not told their names or ages, though the boy appears to be about 6-8 years old, and there are hints that he was born after the disaster, and so had known no other life. Their location isn't described either, though it is somewhere in the northern hemisphere, since they are travelling southwards in the hope of finding somewhere warmer to survive the winter, a global nuclear winter, with polluted air and water. There are no birds, no farm animals, and they live as scavengers, looking for unlooted stores of food and clothing, and trying to hide from other human beings they encounter, most of whom have turned to slavery and cannibalism.
So the book is basically about the journey, a journey without a destination, just the hope of finding somewhere warmer, where survival may be a little easier, and perhaps an even fainter hope of finding a human community. The father tells the son that there are "good guys" somewhere, whom they hope to find, but none of the few people they meet appear to fall into that category, in most cases they don't even try to find out, avoiding human contact as far as possible, because they think that all are "bad guys", which they usually turn out to be. The people and places have no names, because names are a sign of human community, and there is no human community left, other than war bands of raiders in the new Dark Ages.
So though it is a post-cataclysm book, it reminded me of another book I read many years ago, [b:Sammy going south|6296206|Sammy Going South|W H Canaway|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg|6480624] by [a:W.H. Canaway|1591857|W.H. Canaway|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg]. It is about an English boy, Sammy Hartland, who lives with his parents in Egypt, and is orphaned when his parents are killed in a bombing raid. When they were alive they had talked of sending him to his aunt Jane in Durban until the crisis was over, and so he sets out on his own, knowing that Durban is somewhere in the south. The similarity is simply in the need to travel south. Sammy Hartland encounters a lot of human beings, some of whom help him, and others who seek to exploit him for their own financial or emotional gain. And so [b:The road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266449195s/6288.jpg|3355573] is simply about the journey, with the travellers having to rely on their own resources, and what they can scavenge on the way. Whatever disaster caused their present plight is irrelevant. The past is irrelevant, the future vague and uncertain. Both are erased by the need to survive for just one more day, and the need for survival erases human compassion. The father becomes one of the "bad guys" he fears, treating others as he fears they will treat him. And the son alone retains a vestige of human compassion.
DaveCline reviewed The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Review of 'The Road' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
A must read.
Anonymole reviewed The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Review of 'The Road' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
A must read.
Sharyl reviewed The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Review of 'The Road' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
"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
Jonathan Arnold reviewed The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Review of 'The Road' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
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.
LindseyB reviewed The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Review of 'The Road' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
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.
fluxmind reviewed The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Review of 'The Road' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
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.
🍄🌈🎮💻🚲🥓🎃💀🏴🛻🇺🇸 reviewed The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Review of 'The Road' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
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.
kdwarn reviewed The Road by Cormac McCarthy
None
2 stars
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.
kdwarn reviewed The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Review of 'The Road' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
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.
Curtis reviewed The Road (Oprah's Book Club) by Cormac McCarthy (Oprah's Book Club (57))
Review of "The Road (Oprah's Book Club)" on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
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.
Subjects
- Fathers and sons, fiction
- Fiction, dystopian
- Fiction, science fiction, general
- American fiction (fictional works by one author)