NATIONAL BESTSELLERPULITZER PRIZE WINNER National Book Critics Circle Award FinalistA New York Times Notable BookOne of the Best Books of the YearThe Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times, New York, People, Rocky Mountain News, Time, The Village Voice, The Washington PostThe searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac … Post
The 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.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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How have I read so many post apocalyptic books and somehow missed reading this one until now?! This book is beautiful. It is heartbreaking and thought provoking. The nameless characters could be so many of us.
The writing in this book is right up my alley. The repetition and the prose really worked for me. I couldn’t put this book down. So often I don’t enjoy books without an obvious plot, or lack of background, but this book didn’t need those things. The feelings were enough.
This should be required reading. What have I even been doing with my life? Apparently I live under a rock since this is the first Cormac McCarthy I’ve ever read. I’m glad I read this. New favorite.
How much is staying alive worth? What would you be willing to sacrifice? How afraid of others would you become?
A sparse, tightly written novel of the post-apocalyptic world.
Interestingly we never know what caused the disaster. It happened. Now we follow a father and son in this strange new landscape on a journey to? What exactly? And how much of their humanity will they give up along the way?
The Road is set in a gruesome post-apocalyptic world, but it gave me a warm feeling in my heart as I read it. That’s because the father-son relationship at the center of the book, tested by death all around, is so lovely. And, as a father of two young children, it was inspiring.
I am a really big Cormac McCarthy fan and so my expectations were pretty high going into The Road. I had already read a number of McCarthy’s books by the time I got to this one and had put it off for a little while because it was so heavily talked about. Nonetheless, when I finally did read this novel I found out that it is just as haunting and original as it was supposed to be.
The usual things in this book are expertly done, from the characters to the writing, structure, and topic itself. My favorite thing about this novel, however, is the way McCarthy creates little moments. In fact, my favorite moment in the whole novel is about soda. I can make note of this without giving anything away as my mention is vague and it comes up fairly early in the novel. Of course I could list a thousand moments in The Road which have remained with me, but I don’t want to give anything away.
The Road is a remarkable novel. It is the very definition of haunting and it takes such a sharp look at humanity. I highly recommend it.
Question of the Week on Buzz: What’s a book that kept you up all night reading? Definitely The Road. This book was the first of Cormac McCarthy’s works I ever read and I was so incredibly engrossed in the unique writing style, the emotional father/son relationship dynamic, and this haunting and absolutely horrific post-apocalyptic world. I couldn’t put it down. I was up until about 4am reading, my sobbing near the end woke up my husband and he begged me to put it down if only so he could sleep peacefully. Fortunate for him, it was almost over. I would read it again in a heartbeat though. (I should note that I hated the film adaptation though.)
This book took me out of my comfort zone in so many ways. The writing style. The lack of punctuation. The horrific setting. The brutality. The deep sadness. Yet it is one of the most beautiful, haunting books I have ever read. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days after reading it. Not just because of the events in the book, but for the sheer beauty of the writing. I highly recommend it.
The themes of this book reached out and grabbed me by the soul. I was a young father when I first read this book and it shook me deeply. Made me realize how lucky I am to live in the world we live in, and how much I have to be thankful for.
I normally don’t read dark novels because it tends to depress me but this was a nice surprise. A father and son have learned to survive in a gloomy post-apocalyptic world where decent human beings and food are in scarce supply. The relationship between the boy and his dad really drives the story along as we also get glimpses of their life when the mother was still in the picture. The father is doing his best to give his son the inspiration to still be a good person in a bad world full of thieves, murderers and rapists. He consistently references the need to keep “the fire” going which could be interpreted in a few different ways depending on the reader but I chose to see it as a means to keep the hope alive in order to survive another day. It really reminded me to be grateful for a world that’s still in tact (for now), as I couldn’t imagine living under such dismal circumstances.
Funny side note: A coke will appear like the most tempting thing to consume after reading this.
The question I answered was, “Name a book that you read in one sitting.” This is the one I thought of. I didn’t necessarily a book I liked. It is very grim, dystopian. I read it in a McDonald’s in Columbus while waiting for my son who was visiting a card show.
McCarthy certainly knows how to paint word pictures. The landscape is vivid in my mind.
Hands down one of the best books I’ve ever read. Cormac McCarthy has created a dystopian landscape that is so vivid, one almost wishes it were real in spite of its grotesqueness. There are certain sentences that still stick with me months after reading and the ending is so hopeful even though the entire book has a pervading opressiveness about it. Just fantastic. A definite must read.
Dark and Depressing, but Thought-Provoking
Cormac McCarthy has created a stark gray, post-apocalyptic world devoid of morality and hope. In terse minimalistic prose, we follow a man and his son as they travel south pushing a shopping cart along a road stalked by cold and cannibals.
The milieu of the novel is a post-nuclear war Earth. Firestorms have raged across the landscape destroying almost all non-human life, both plant, and animal. What remains appears to have died in the nuclear winter that followed. This premise strained believability for me. I just don’t see how all life on the Earth could be destroyed except for lingering remnants of mankind. Even in the remote arctic and Death Valley, life exists. Another novel in this genre quotes the verse from Ecclesiastes to make a similar point, “Men go and come, but Earth Abides.”
But once I suspended disbelief the novel was an interesting, if horrific, tale of the slow death of humankind. In their bleak world, the man and boy endlessly search for food and shelter and in the process see horrors no one should ever see. Like animals, their encounters with others are brutal and filled with fear.
I read the novel easily over a few days and found myself reflecting on both the few hopeful passages and the sadness of the overall story. The plot is simple, even minimalistic, just like McCarthy’s writing style. The man and boy are unnamed, their dialogue is terse. We never know exactly where they are or where they are going. All we know is that they are heading south to escape the cold of nuclear winter. Even they do not know what they will find when they get to wherever they are going. In keeping with his writing style punctuation is clearly optional. The novel uses no quotation marks and only limited commas and apostrophes.
Recommendation: As I mentioned, The Road strained believability for me. The story was too pessimistic and minimalistic for my taste but, if you like post-apocalyptic literature, it is well worth reading.
Who, if not McCarthy, would describe a father-son journey in a post-apocalypse world in search of warmth, love, and a touch of humanity. In the style of biblical writing and archetypal figures, McCarthy paints a gloomy, gray and cold world that has lost all human dignity, in which the father and son are the bearers of a single torch which, with an indirect divine command, must pass the flames on until a new and better world created.
Another world that McCarthy draws is the inner one of father and son. A black and white world of color, hope, and despair, weakness and strength. A beautiful and cruel world full of beautiful words, written in the finest.
This is a somber and depressing book with the light at its end not exceeding the view of a match, but as long as one can still see some light, than there is hope.
Cormac McCarthy at the height of his spare, dark story-telling skills.
One of the best books I’ve read: powerful, imaginative, and gripping. The sentences are as sparse as the apocalyptic landscape of the story, accompanied by very little punctuation except for commas and periods. But the love of the father for his son shines through and the book had me in tears by the end. Masterfully written.
This is not a book I would typically read, however I was “challenged” to read it. I thought it was a great story.
Impressive book! The language was powerful and poetic. One of the best dystopian novels I have read.
“Yeah, but stories are supposed to be happy.”
“They don’t have to be.”
And this one certainly is not. Relentlessly bleak, grim, and haunting. I’ll be thinking about it for some time to come. I saw the movie before I read the book (the reverse of my usual practice). The two complement each other. Watching the movie, I thought the boy was too whiny. Any child growing up in such a terrible world couldn’t help but be tough, I thought. But reading the book, I realized the boy is meant to represent the lost innocence of the world and the last shred of human decency. He’s a fragile point of light in the darkness.
The writing is beautiful, and I would have given the book 5 stars except its ending didn’t satisfy me. The movie did a better job of explaining who the rescuers are. The book left too many unanswered questions. How will the good people manage to feed themselves, especially after taking on responsibility for the boy? Is there any hope for humankind? Has the “rescue” simply postponed the inevitable? The ending felt rushed, as though the author had tired of his apocalyptic world and was in a hurry to leave it.
Nonetheless, I recommend The Road to readers of science fiction / fantasy and anybody who is into post-apocalyptic horror stories. The author’s vision of the future is as terrible as they come.
Enjoyed this story because it shows how much humanity a person is willing to shed for love. The lack of chapters made it easy for me to carried away while reading. I’m not sure what the lack of punctuation during dialogue (i.e., no quotation marks). I wasn’t opposed but sometimes found it odd. Tear jerker for me. There were also moments where I wish I could read faster because I wanted to know what happened next.
This book is a love story. It’s about a father’s love for his son in a post-apocalyptic world where there is no reason to be alive. They try to find ways to just subsist while dodging violent gangs, cannibals, and a other people who have devolved into humanity’s basest nature. Winner of the Pulitzer prize as well as many other awards. This book reached me on a spiritual, mythical level and like a lot of myth it’s capable of being interpreted in many different ways. Beware: McCarthy is not a big fan of punctuation.
This book left me thinking about it for days… no, not just days, years. I read this book probably ten years ago and I still have moments that I reflect back on some of the passages. Powerful, emotional, deep, like a weighted blanket on fire.