I made a mistake of reading the rest of this book last night before bed. There was a moment when the man was on a ship and the boy was on the beach, and I wanted to make sure the son would be okay so I kept reading.
The momentum from that carried me through the end where about 10 pages before the end I began to cry, and it took a while for me to stop. I felt so much for the father who tried desperately to protect his son.

This book slogs you through a dreary wasteland where a man with a young son cannot risk trusting anyone - where people are cannibals and will take everything from you.

As you follow these two, you feel all the hard choices, disappointments, fears, love. You wonder if death would be better, if it's the right thing to do. You distrust people and feel shame when the son is more forgiving and loving than you would be.

I found that the way it was written - fairly direct language breifly interspersed with near poetry - was effective. It was immersive and terribly, terribly sad.

The cycles of extreme hardship with respites of protection were an experience for me. If they were in a safe place, I felt like I could relax with them for a moment and it made the suffering they went through feel more painful.

Overall, it was a book that made me grateful to not face those decisions, and it made me profoundly sad for a man who'd tried so hard.