Tuesday, May 27, 2008

The Road by Cormac McCarthy


The Road by Cormac McCarthy may be one of the scariest books I have ever read. Not in the monster jumping out of the closet kind of scary but more of the this really might could happen scary. McCarthy also wrote the novel No Country for Old Men recently adapted to film and directed by the Coen Brothers.

The Road involves a father and son traveling on the road, (of course) in a post-apocalyptic America, sometime in the not too distant future. The story follows the survival of these two people. The father tries to instill a high regard for human life (think a society filled with cannibalism!) into the boy. "We're one of the good guys...right?" The boy continually asks his father. They live in a burnt-out, ash covered world with no vegetation and no animals. On the run, they're trying to make it to the coast, not sure of what they'll find. They meet up with various characters on the way.

The book, extremely well written uses...sparse but poignant dialogue. It is painfully real at times, funny and extremely sad. The book is not graphic in it's description of some of the brutal things that take place, however it is disturbing nonetheless. I give it 5 stars out of 5. Destined to become a classic!

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