The Road Book Review


The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road was a easy read, by that I mean its not a 2000 page book with small type. It a book that could be read in a day if you wanted to. I took a few days, a hour here and there to finish. In that sense it is easy. That is the only sense. The story is dank, dark, morose and downright depressing. Literally.

The story takes place in a Post apocalyptic America, I gather it is somewhere is the south east. The skies are all grey and full of ash and soot. Trees are charred, animals are scarce. Paragraph upon paragraph describing bitter cold nights, dark skies and a charred landscape. Often I read a paragraph only to think to myself that the exact idea was already expressed a dozen times using different words.

But because the depressing, bland world McCarthy creates sets up the reader in a sort of funk, it also makes for engrossing reading when something does happen. And it does get intense. The story itself is rather small, with a narrative folowing a father and son as they are basically Hobo's traveling along a dangerous road, following a creased map, trying to get to the coast. They have to scrounge for food and shelter along the way, all the while trying to avoid humanity. It seems the surviving humans have taken to survival by any means necessary, including cannibalism.

During the books narrative you just know the pay off is going to be bad and heart wrenching, and to a point it is. I will not spoil the ending but I will say that if you hang into the end, McCarthy allows the sun to poke through the clouds for a moment or two.

Rating 3/5

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