The Road (Oprah's Book Club)
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son’s fight to survive that “only adds to McCarthy’s stature as a living master. It’s gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful” (San Francisco Chronicle).
One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century
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.
One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century
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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Community Reviews
What Bookclubbers are saying about this book
✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI
Readers say *The Road* offers a powerful, vivid portrayal of a father-son bond in a bleak, post-apocalyptic world. Reviewers agree on McCarthy’s strik...
I know. You're shocked. Why would I ever pick up a book that every other reader has termed "depressing", "bleak", "savage" and "heartbreaking"? It's not really up my alley of normal reads. I don't know how many times I was told that I'd never make it through the end of the book.
When a friend mentioned The Road in daily conversation and started to explain what it is, and I then informed him that I was in fact reading it, he gave me a look of unadulterated shock and said, "Wait, why?"
And that is why.
I liked the reactions from my friends that I have been getting when I tell them I was reading/have read this book. And more shocking: I liked the book. I was a little anxious about trying to plow my way through a book that didn't have specified dialogue (I love me some quotation marks). But I ended up enjoying the way the conversations played out in my head, without the author having to tell me the tone of voice.
Even though the story does seem savage, bleak, depressing and most the times, downright heartbreaking, I think that it is the love between father and son that had me hooked. It wasn't as grotesque and horrid as I had been expecting - then again, I was going off of assurances from everyone I knew that I would HATE the book - and more, it was littered with hope and love and even a happy ending... of sorts.
In the end, The Road is definitely worth reading. If a romance-addict, HEA-seeking, "hopeless" character like me can "get through it" then everyone should.
When a friend mentioned The Road in daily conversation and started to explain what it is, and I then informed him that I was in fact reading it, he gave me a look of unadulterated shock and said, "Wait, why?"
And that is why.
I liked the reactions from my friends that I have been getting when I tell them I was reading/have read this book. And more shocking: I liked the book. I was a little anxious about trying to plow my way through a book that didn't have specified dialogue (I love me some quotation marks). But I ended up enjoying the way the conversations played out in my head, without the author having to tell me the tone of voice.
Even though the story does seem savage, bleak, depressing and most the times, downright heartbreaking, I think that it is the love between father and son that had me hooked. It wasn't as grotesque and horrid as I had been expecting - then again, I was going off of assurances from everyone I knew that I would HATE the book - and more, it was littered with hope and love and even a happy ending... of sorts.
In the end, The Road is definitely worth reading. If a romance-addict, HEA-seeking, "hopeless" character like me can "get through it" then everyone should.
everyone told me this book would be horrifying. maybe i’ve seen too many post apocalyptic movies or read to many war memoirs but this wasn’t as frightening as i’d assumed. i will say that it was extremely gripping, i read it in about 48 hours basically in 2 sittings. i was so eager to see what happened next but the biggest action scenes fell flat.
I'm usually one of the first to defend books that are criticized as being slow, but I was very often tempted to skim through another hopeless musing to see if anything would happen. I found myself wondering why I kept reading. Then again, perhaps that was the point- the two characters trudging through this post apocalyptic wasteland were likely asking themselves a similar question.
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