The Road

Wow. 

This was an extremely powerful book and I hardly know what to say about it.  I guess I could start with the name of the book, huh?  It's The Road by Cormac McCarthy.  And yes, Oprah did choose it for her book club -- seems a very strange choice to me.  I've read several of Oprah's picks and while some of them are very good books, none are like this.  Then again, I'm not sure I've read a book like this before.  Sure there are other post-apocalyptic novels out there -- Cat's Cradle and Oryx and Crake come to mind (both excellent, by the way) -- but this book is so sparse, so bleak.  The writing reflects the landscape that the father and son traverse.

Not much happens in the book, so I'm not going to try to give you a plot summary.  Instead I'll leave you with my experience reading the book.

I started this book last night and didn't sleep well at all because it was so disturbing, and yet I awoke this morning and was compelled to finish the rest of the book in one sitting.  At the end I broke down in hysterical sobs -- it's that moving.

Comments

[rebecca]

i found it terribly depressing and disturbing. i've read mccarthy's other books and while they are not uplifting either, their plots had more meat to them. i rather liked how not everything was explained; the ambiguity was refreshing. have you read no country for old men? i don't like westerns, but it was what made me like CM and want to read more of his work.

[sandy]

Julie, The Road has kept me intrigued. I'm on the fence as to whether I will read it or not. Still.
I am one of THOSE that weep at commercials so this book may just toss me over the edge. But I keep going back and thinking about it. I'm sure that means I am destined to read it!

[Pete]

This clinches it -- as soon as I'm finished with Atonement, I'm pushing back my reading list for The Road.