What a strange, bleak book. But not as sad as everybody says. ( )

Well-crafted and mercifully short because the trauma was unrelenting and there was no relief. Ending was abrupt, awkward and didn’t fit, almost as if he couldn’t think how to wrap it up. Book club read but I wouldn’t rush to recommend. ( )

A father and son walk through devastation with no hope of better and certain danger of worse. Lots of meaning, but what does anything mean when there is no future and mushrooms and men are all that's left, and not many mushrooms. ( )

This is my second favorite book. I read it three times in one year. ( )

I resisted reading this novel as my impression was that its worldview would prove to be entirely too bleak and dismal. Not just the description of the novel but McCarthy's overall reputation preceded it. And now I find it's a story of naive Christianity, of living with love for one's fellow man even in the worst imaginable circumstances, how hope and goodness are the true core of the universe. Well then!

McCarthy takes his time to disabuse me of my preconception. Roving bands of horrific cannibal gangs. All is now gray ash, no living plant or non-human animal life remaining. The boy's mother sounds right when she says in a flashback scene, announcing her suicide to her husband, "We're not survivors. We're the walking dead in a horror film... I'd take him with me if it weren't for you. You know I would. It's the right thing to do." I'm nodding, thinking yeah, I'd do it too.

McCarthy's prose runs existentially bleak:

Everything damp. Rotting. In a drawer he found a candle. No way to light it. He put it in his pocket. He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe.

It's a reverse mystical experience. Instead of a flash of insight into the oneness and goodness of creation, it's a flash of its absolute negation. It's bleak and depressing but it's riveting writing, I really want to keep reading and following this journey from blackest hell (or nothingness, rather).

I race through it and lo, the novel's penultimate paragraph:

The woman when she saw him put her arms around him and held him. Oh, she said, I am so glad to see you. She would talk to him sometimes about God. He tried to talk to God but the best thing was to talk to his father and he did talk to him and he didnt forget. The woman said that was all right. She said that the breath of God was his breath yet though it pass from man to man through all time.

And the novel's final sentence:

In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

This is not the bleak prophet of despair I'd come to expect. Rather far from it. Then I thought back to how the boy, though always terrified and in fear, is also always begging his father not to hurt or kill anyone, even when attacked and their survival threatened. They come across an old man on the road, and he begs his father to give the man food from their almost exhausted store. A solitary outcast steals all their supplies without which they'd quickly die and they catch him, and the boy implores his father not to do anything to harm the man. He longs to care for others. In this most dire of possibly imaginable environments, he's the ultimate bleeding heart, acting out Christ, in all its seeming practical ridiculousness, despite his fear.

I've read that McCarthy wrote this novel inspired by his love for his own son. It does focus on that love front and center, the terrible choices that love can face, the fierce devotion of a parent to their child. But there's an even bigger love here. ( )

Father and son struggle to survive after some event has destroyed earth as we know it. A book of relationship. Very good.

(2007)A father & son try to find livable conditions in a post apocalyptic world that they don't totally understand or is explained. Very good quick read. Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehane

So much of nothing happens in this book. There's no character development, and precious little character exposition. The situation (whole world, including plants and animals, is dying) is given no explanation and precious little coherent thought. (Why are humans still able to have babies if animals aren't? ) I kept reading/listening to this thing hoping something would eventually happen. I was thoroughly disappointed. ( )

5.5/10
Beautifully written, but simply not enough story. Probably better than the film, though altogether similar. Will not revisit McCarthy again. ( )

Love how he uses a simplification of language and punctuation to reinforce the erosion of the world in the story. Minimalistic yet very rich, with a story arc that is almost invisible until towards the brilliant end. Masterful pacing, and great use of a lack of chapter divisions. ( )

Walk, push a cart, "I'm hungry.", look for food, "be careful," hide, walk more.

Bleak is okay with me. Boring is not. Points for style, though. ( )

I still need more time to get my head around this, but I can't help feeling that the not particularly ambiguously, not entirely awful ending of the book feeling far too happy a way to close our this story says a lot about me and where in right now.

***

Initial Reaction. More Thoughts Another time

I finished The Road. Feel weird. Not sure how I feel about the ending, but also know depressed Brina naturally distrusts anything other than the most bleak and nihilistic ending to bleak and nihilistic stories.

Honestly, I think the whole thing is how Andre Breton described surrealism as "Mad Love".

I am also holding on to my headcanon of it being a prequel to Waiting for Godot. That tree is just a ways down the road. ( )

Wow. Excellent story, but bleaker than hell. He never explains the calamity that befell the world, but that makes it that much more horrific. ( )

Some major struggles with this one, all about grammar and punctuation. There were none. Almost no commas, no quote marks, and so many sentence fragments. Some parts were hard to follow because of this.

Yet ... it was a compelling story, hard to put down. I was invested. The awful sentence structure developed a flow, almost poetic. It wasn't a waste of time and I would actually recommend. ( )

This book was incredible. I'm not sure that any other book has ever affected me in this way. One of the most beautiful and depressing things I've ever read. ( )

I avoided this book for years because of the movie, but after enjoying All the Pretty Horses, I thought I'd give it a shot.

It's very peculiar to me that anyone would make a movie out of a Cormac McCarthy novel. With the language stripped away, they seem to be pretty standard genre fare. His prose is generally quite spare, his dialogue is plain but lifelike, his action scenes are terse. But he seems to relish explaining the humble, everyday deeds of his characters, and using precise but obscure words for mundane things like furniture ("chifforobe"). I wouldn't blame anyone for finding it tedious, but it strikes a chord with me. It's humane. ( )

It wasn't bad but it also was not anything special which is disappointing after hearing from multiple sources how good this book was. ( )

I'm told Cormac McCarthy doesn't always write like this, but I love the wondrously spare prose. Much like hemingway it requires that you read between the lines to find the emotional punch, which makes it that much more evocative. It's not particularly profound in a philosophical way, although it's not without a few self reflections, but it's a gripping page turner and the characters and situations are vividly laid out. ( )

In a burned out America a father and his young son, struggle to make their way south and the coast, supposedly, to safety. They have no idea what, if anything, awaits them there. The entire plot is bound up in this march along the road, seeking out a place of refuge from the various threats. The landscape is destroyed, nothing moves save the ash on the wind and cruel, lawless men with only a pistol for protection. They must simply keep walking.

They travel through a wasteland in a state of near starvation without so much as a hint of true hope in the future but it's hope that keeps them moving forward. The Man maintains hope for his son, repetitively telling him that they are the “good guys” and that they are “carrying the fire.” It’s clear that the Man has lost hope in the world, he is haunted by memories of the past but, that’s not something he’s willing to share with his son, as a father myself this is an easy thing to imagine.

"You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget"

The Man uses the phrase “carrying the fire” as another way of ensuring his son that they have a purpose in life and that they aren’t suffering for no reason. They have to carry hope, kindness, and morality with them through their lives because others aren’t. The “fire” of human goodness is at stake. The Man sees it when he looks at his son in a way I believe will resonate with readers everywhere.

The Boy is presented as a figure of hope throughout the novel, The Boy is kind and helpful to a fault. When the two meet an old traveller named Eli, the Boy, despite The Man’s attempts to stop him, gives him food from their supplies. Eli is without gratitude for this incredibly selfless act, but The Boy does it anyway. The Boy becomes a symbol of what humanity used to be and Its at moments like this that makes it clear why The Man is willing to do anything to ensure that his son survives.

"Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden."

The book is filled with the torments of a post-apocalyptic world but, it’s also filled with a great deal of love. It's love that keeps The Man and The Boy bound to one another.

This is a book that I'm struggling to rate. On one hand I felt that is was overly long and in need of some serious editing. The Man and the Boy are on the verge of starvation just before stumbling on a hidden cache of food a few times too many and they have too many meetings with 'the bad guys' than I felt was strictly necessary. But I also admire the author's writing style and feel that it conveys a very powerful and moving message. I believe that readers will relate to the Man's will to survive against the odds for as long as possible so as to ensure that his son has a future.

"Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave." ( )

This got me as someone who has a massively close relationship with their father. I genuinely felt on edge, like I was living in the times of the end of the world. It is visual and vivid and horrific and raw. ( )

I love an American road trip book - not sure if it is a genre, maybe as a quest or escapism with a bit of soul searching involved. The point is often to 'find' yourself or to find the 'real' America whilst on the open road or in historical fiction on the wagon train or the train itself. It is all part of the Great American Dream but this book is the American nightmare.

A man and boy are on the road walking after some catastrophic natural phenomena. The sky is grey and clouded and the land is covered in grey ash. There are earthquakes and in the distance the lights of things burning. We know it is bad because the boy and man are on the constant search for food and water, living a life where there is no way of feeding yourself other than what you can take from others and we know this can't last forever. Food will run out. Walking alongside them is death - both theirs and others. If other people are met, they can't be sure they won't be raped or eaten.

During this journey the relationship between the father and son, neither is ever named, is shown to be close and loving with the boy taking on the role of a conscience for the man - we are the good guys, aren't we? Or pointing out when people are scared or hungry. There are glimmers of hope in this relationship as they strive to retain their humanity in a world where they can never unsee what they have seen. 'Carrying the fire' is a shorthand way of saying that they have purpose and are good.

Just as they seem to be starving, food is found in abandonned houses and cellars as are blankets and fire wood. At one point they come across a bunker fully equipped to live a length of time hidden and this is a sign that things are going to get worse. The boy starts to inisist that his father also has some of whatever he has including his last ever can of coca cola. Such symbolism. As we move through the book the boy starts to understand that he is the future and the inevitability of his father's death - the only thing we can be certain of. But there is also the death of language. If we can't see birds or colours how will we remember the names of them. And once we lose language, we start to lose the ability to think because we think in words.

Towards the end the father calls the boy 'Papa' - the ramblings of a fevered man or the change-over of roles because this is what the man has been training the boy to do for the whole journey.

The voice of a loving father is maintained throughout the book until the end - survival is all. ( )

If I’d read Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Road earlier in life, I’m sure the experience would have been affecting. But the story was particularly harrowing to read now, as the father of a young son.

The Road features an unnamed man and boy traversing an “ashen scabland” in the aftermath of some unspecified cataclysm. It might have been an asteroid strike or a nuclear exchange; McCarthy only hints at the trigger. What matters is that ash is everywhere, veiling the sun and cooling the globe. And in this grim vision of the future, humanity has plunged into a moral winter as well as a physical one.

Robbed of its ability to grow crops, civilization crumbled fast and hard, leaving “murder … everywhere upon the land, the world … largely populated by men who would eat your children in front of your eyes and the cities themselves held by cores of blackened looters who tunneled among the ruins and crawled from the rubble white of tooth and eye carrying charred and anonymous tins of food in nylon nets like shoppers in the commissaries of hell.” In the countryside, bloodcults set “balefires on distant ridges” and harness slaves to wagons trailed by “catamites illclothed against the cold and fitted in dogcollars.”

Survivors like the man and the boy subsist by scavenging, too. It’s not easy. Obvious sources of canned goods—a store, a pantry—have already been picked over, rifled for every scrap of nonperishable nutrition. But the man is crafty enough to sniff out hidden morsels, and on those rare occasions when he and the boy discover a surplus, they house it in the grocery cart they push down the roads and highways that remain passable, shuffling onward in their journey toward the coast. No certainty of salvation awaits them there; the man has only a vague sense that things might be better by the ocean. His one true direction—the North Star he steers by now that ambient ash has obscured the night sky—is that the boy must be protected.

Much of the book reads like a primer in the mechanics of post-apocalyptic survival: the man starts campfires in ingenious ways, improvises the tools he needs, and generally MacGyvers his way through a waking nightmare. McCarthy’s writing style lends itself to these sorts of procedural inventories, often stringing several sentence fragments together to form lists and rapid-fire descriptions. Thematically, his sparse punctuation—certain contractions don’t get apostrophes; dialogue lacks quotation marks—contributes to an overall sense of a fraying society with little use for conventions of the past. And the absence of chapter breaks reinforces the seemingly endless nature of the man and the boy’s trek, a bleak pilgrimage that stretches on like the titular road they follow.

But the narrative never feels monotonous. It’s interspersed with tense encounters and bursts of dark poetry such as the excerpt I quoted above and this gem from the same section of the book: “The soft talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor … and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes.”

All this was masterful (if brutal). Yet what hit me hardest was the thought of trying to parent a child in such a setting.

Part of it is the imagery—the haunting visuals McCarthy creates and then exposes the boy to. “I don’t think you should see this,” the man says at one point. (Quotation marks added by me for clarity’s sake.) “What you put in your head is there forever?” asks the boy. “Yes.” “It’s okay Papa.” “It’s okay?” “They’re already there.”

Shielding your child from all evil is an impossibility, though. Providing them food and shelter is a fundamental responsibility—and the boy is almost always hungry and cold, his “laddered ribs” shivering against the man at night while they huddle under a plastic tarp as gray rain drizzles down. It’s gut-wrenching to imagine trading places with them.

But I think what really got to me was a simpler horror: the accumulated weight of the boy repeating variations of, “I’m scared. I’m really scared.” Sometimes just when he hears a noise; sometimes after the man asks him to stay behind while he explores the next foreboding building and reminds the boy to lie still in the grass and wait like a fawn. And in every instance, the man is unable to reassure the boy in a way either of them believes.

I’m not a doomsday prepper—I don’t think the events McCarthy presents in The Road are likely to occur. And I appreciate what I took to be one of the themes: that in times of peril, you may not be able to trust everyone, but you have to trust someone.

But what I’ll remember most is that, after reading the last page, this man felt compelled to hug his boy.

(For more reviews like this one, see www.nickwisseman.com) ( )

I despised this book. I found it pretentious and over written. ( )

Here's what I wrote in 2008 about this read: "Desolate, depressing, post-apocolytic, dead-end for the lonely man and the son he loves. Why did I choose to order and read this book?" Perhaps I should re-read and be more attuned to the love of the father & son than be overwhelmed by the post-apocolyptic environment in which they travel. ( )

En un mundo desolado un padre y un hijo se tienen el uno al otro.

Entiendo que la parte del mundo desolado echa a mucha gente para atras. Pero creo que el conflicto del hombre para intentar aislar al niño del sufrimiento causado por el mundo es muy real y esta muy bien explorado.

Hay escenas de verdadera tension y las conversaciones son muy naturales.

El final es lo unico que me parecio flojo. ( )