A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece. A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other. The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.
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0I gave this two stars based on my level of liking the book, not on how well it was written (though I wasn't terribly impressed with that either).
This novel is short (less than seven hours of audio), which I was thankful for because I found it very bleak. I expected that, given the premise is a post apocalypse world where the man and son are struggling to survive. McCarthy's writing is very effective for painting this gray world very vividly. The story is presenting the harsh reality of the new way things are, and this felt realistic enough to me.
However, it was a bit boring in parts and the book felt aimless because the characters had no "long term goals" as the child puts it.
I think there were a few passages where the man starts to muse on "deep" topics like mortality, God, and the meaning of life etc; however I was listening to the audiobook and these probably impressive phrases just went right over my head. I think I may have found them more profound if reading, but these fragments felt like they didn't fit with this severely practical man.
Also, I think I smiled like twice. I did not find much that was funny.
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