The Road (Oprah's Book Club)

_The_Road_ is--first and foremost--a story about paternal love in a hopeless situation. A father & son fight their way across an American landscape devastated by some past apocalyptic disaster, with the sole goal of escaping an on-coming winter by moving south. All plant and animal life is long dead. The only humans left are scavengers who fight to the death for the meager remaining (and rapidly dwindling) resources: food, shoes, clothing, shelter. The father is totally devoted to his son: not just to protecting his life, but his innocence. He maintains a delicate balancing act between leaving the boy back on the trail (where he can be harmed) and letting him come forward and witness brutality no 5-year-old should have to live with; to the point of teaching him how to shoot himself in the head to avoid capture. After witnessing cannibalism, he promises they will never eat people. When the boy makes a mistake, he minimizes it to spare him feelings of guilt. He avoids presenting dangers to the boy whenever possible, but never sugar-coats the truth to the point it damages his credibility. He struggles to uphold a personal morality against enemies that have none. The son is very small (4-5), and continually makes small requests ("Carry me"), which the father grants as often as he can. The son is equally devoted to his father and cloyingly naïve. He insists on giving their food to strangers, wants to adopt another boy they meet along the way, and asks if they can fly to Mars to escape their circumstances. In this lifeless world: grey days, where the sun never shines, and opaque nights, where the lack of artificial light makes travel impossible; McCarthy's language re-inforces the bleakness of a perpetual nuclear winter: * No character has a name. * The descriptions are culled down to a bare minimum of words, often lacking verbs. * There are no chapters. The narrative just keeps going. * He writes many contractions without apostrophes, primarily those using 'not.' * The dialogs unfold without attributions or quotation marks. Keeping track is only possible because there are only 2 characters with distinctive styles. In summary, _The_Road_ was depressing from start to finish, but so compelling that it became hard to put down in places. I am torn between praising its merits and dismissing it as a bad dream.

“The Breath of God was his breath, yet though it pass from man to man through all of time.” I think that quote, more than any other embodies The Road. It’s a book that displays both the savage and saintly nature of humans in stark relief against one another.

Sobbed like a baby at the end of the book

Mid

First time enjoying a post-apocalyptic novel without romance. Had me on the edge of my seat.