“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy
Long recommended by online literary friends VT and Steph, I finally got around to The Road by Cormac McCarthy. My husband G. Grod read it recently and thought it good, not great. I was interested to see where I’d fall on the continuum.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world of ashes, a father and son follow The Road south, trying to outrun winter. They’re clad in rags, carrying knapsacks and pushing a shopping cart of their few prized and necessary possessions. They’re cautious and alone, hoping for other pilgrims like themselves, but mostly encountering thieves and cannibals.
They plodded on, thin and filthy as street addicts. Cowled in their blankets against the cold and their breath smoking, shuffling through the black and silky drifts. They were crossing the broad coastal plain where the secular winds drove them in howling clouds of ash to find shelter where they could. Houses or barns or under the bank of a roadside ditch with the blankets pulled over their heads. and the noon sky black as the cellars of hell. He held the boy against him, cold to the bone. Dont lose heart, he said. We’ll be all right. (177)
Utterly dark in tone and description, the characters yet carry within something that the man and boy refer to as the fire. The landscape is burned and ashen; the sun does not penetrate. Food is only to be found by scavenging scraps from the old, forgotten world. The relationship between the two, McCarthy’s dazzling, often-dizzying language, and the ever-present dread of starvation or worse–all kept me reading quickly through the book, and loath to put it down.
I felt it profound, moving, terrifying, and terrifically sad. I was impressed by McCarthy’s skill with words, the relentless momentum of the story, and by the empathy he generated with two characters, lightly sketched with a sure hand. Quite wonderful, I thought. I have no wish to see the movie; I think it could only diminish the experience of the book.
January 7th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Reading your review of this one has made me think I’d like to read it again - it was terrifying and sad and gutting, but I appreciated the way this book provoked me to think and the way it made me feel (ok, it made me feel bad, but I appreciated that it could make me feel so much). 2010 is my year of reading my own books and also making time for re-reads so it may crop up in my reading again this year. Thanks for the reminder!
But yeah, no desire whatsoever to see the movie. The images burned into my mind from the writing alone were quite enough for me.
January 9th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
I just reviewed this one on my blog, but with nowhere near the eloquence with which you did. As a father of a son, it was easy to connect with the narrative.
I couldn’t put it down, quite honestly.
January 9th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
I too found it hard to put down. The short segments and strong prose pulled me through the book. After they encounter a group with a truck, there’s a section where the book could not be pried from my hands till the danger passed.
As a parent of sons, I could easily connect, too, but I could feel for the mother as well. Really emotionally wrenching.