The Road

This story remains seared in my mind. It was so disturbing, and yet so thought-provoking. I love all his work, but this one stands alone.

Grim, haunting and so sad - stayed with me for days after reading.

A disturbing, bleak, portrait of post apocalyptic America populated by two main characters, father and son, as they traverse a nightmare landscape. I haven't been able to read many books from cover to cover during the last few years as I usually sample chapters to develop a taste for the author's voice, but this novel was the exception. I was drawn in to the story by these two character's and their struggle to survive. It's not your typical post apocalyptic story line. The father's interior monologue drives the story and demonstrates the unflagging affection he possesses for his child and his need to deliver them from the chaos that surrounds them. Their ordeal serves to underscore the depth of their bond and to what extent a father will fight a hostile world. Despite the unrelenting dark atmosphere of the story, these characters form a luminous synergy, in which without the other, neither individual spirit could survive this road to perdition.

Reading The Road is certainly one of my literary highlights in all my years as a bibliophile. The sparsity of its world is mirrored in the prose and pulls you in deeper the further you read. The dialog between the two main characters is phenomenally strong and manages to convey how 'the man' or father is struggling to look after and protect his son in the remains of a world we once all knew and how his son is trying to find something to hold onto his innocence when everyone around him seems to be 'the bad people'.

It manages to hit all the emotional points and leaves you with an immense sense of hope. The ending is probably one of the best I've read in a long time and even though part of you knows what will eventually happen at the end of the story you still are emotionally drained after reading it.

I can't think of a better book to recommend to friends and fmaily and anyone who wants to lose themselves in a wonderful world and story.

(Original Review, 2006-09-30)“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”In “The Road” by Cormac McCarthyTo me this novel raises the question in how far literature should be exempt from moral judgements. "It's art!" has never been a good excuse for producing something disturbing. Torture itself can be done artfully and writing a story painful enough to disturb the reader for weeks or more should not be done without a good reason. Sure, we need disturbing, because things can't keep going the way they are. That's why I admire McCarthy's "The Road". But does the abyss of horror have a bottom which we can plumb to dispel the fear that it is bottomless, or is there always a greater horror that need to be explored and we are eventually forced to retreat, beaten and deeply hurt, when we can't take any more. Should we spend our lives engaging with the very worst we can think of, or would we do better to know these things exist and act to keep them down without looking at them to closely?I wonder the same myself especially in the age of the Internet. We used to be somewhat shielded from extreme horror, unless we were directly linked to it or chose to pick up a book such as American Psycho- in that instance we make a definite choice to engage with horror, albeit in a remote, two-dimensional way, i.e. through the pages of a paperback which we can put down at any time.Now, with the careless clicks of our laptops or by simply touching a screen, the world of true horror is laid bare whether it's through terrorists posting its latest horrible execution or mistakenly finding yourself in a very disturbing Twitter feed (done that myself & trying to dislodge it from my brain weeks later...).The distinction between "mythical" and "realistic" is not a bad starting point if we want to write about “The Road” - but it's quickly exhausted in the face of the variety of 'real' and fanciful world-disclosive techniques in literature. “Blood Meridian” is carefully 'realistic' in the sense that, for example, the characters kill and die as people did and do beyond the pale of civility. Because it's so unrelievedly violent and discompassionate, I'd call it "fantastic" or "phantasmagorical" or some such categorization, but McCarthy's sentences and phrases aren't unspooled at the expense of the characters feeding themselves realistically, say, or of the natural verisimilitude of south-western botany and geology, and so on.It's not where Cormack writes about is HOW he writes it. And he writes beautifully.Can true horror really be woven into literature? Or does the horror dominate so that is the only thing we really remember from such books? How do we benefit from immersing ourselves in this horror?I'm not sure.

Astounding use of sparse language to create a bleak and desolate world. Captivating and darkly fascinating story and writing.

Though I did not intend to, when I took this book to bed with me early last night I thought I would begin it. Three hours later I had finished it. I fell into the story when I began the book. We don't know exactly what took place but the earth as we knew it was gone and remaining in it's place was a veritable wasteland, few people, no power or communication of any kind. Of those who remained all were scrambling or hobbling along 'the road' in search of food, clean water, anything that they could find that would help them to survive. 'The man and the boy' are part of them. Trusting no one, for evil abounds in the godless territory, and ever moving Southward, the man and the boy journey along each day. The boy's childhood has been ripped from him though his father is devoted to him and loving with him. Living through one more day on 'the road' is all they have to look forward to.When they hear others coming near them, they quickly hide until all danger is passed. The man tells the boy that there are good people out there somewhere and they will find them but until then, they can trust no one. The man develops a chronic cough with bloody spittle that never completely leaves him. At one point the boy comes down with a fever and the man nurses him for several days before the boy rallies. When the boy regains his strength they once again take to 'the road'.This is not really a story with a beginning and an end. It is written in a style simplistic to the reader. The way the book ended is my only critique of this one. Had it not been so pat, I would have given 'The Road' a 5 star rec rather than the 4 1/2 stars that I did give it. I highly recommend it and only wish that I had read it much earlier.

In this austere and brutal post-apocalyptic tale, McCarthy’s prose recreates the desolation and despair that the end of the world has engendered. While the cause of the Earth’s apocalypse is merely hinted at (everything is covered in ash, so nuclear winter is a plausible inference), its effects are inescapable—and they are encapsulated in this tale of a nameless man and his nameless son, their relationship a microcosm of humankind’s struggle to survive—physically, morally, and spiritually—amidst hopelessness and destruction.Everything about this novel is bare—the dialogue, the action, the plot. McCarthy can’t even be bothered to spare quotation marks or apostrophes. The minimalist dialogue lacks the usual stylistic markers of punctuation, and rarely is a speaker identified. The reader is thus obligated to concentrate clearly on the verbal exchanges throughout the novel (the majority of which take place between the man and the boy); the spare prose of these conversations carries weighty subtext, and so few words contain such profound meaning that the prose is elevated to poetic power.The few “action” scenes contained in this tale are genuinely gruesome and brutal—their intensity balances their scarcity—and the reader is left struggling between wanting something to happen (presumably some sign of hope) and dreading whatever might happen next. So few writers can achieve this degree of narrative tension using such minimal style, yet McCarthy has mastered it in devastating fashion.

Great narration , beautifully spoken and the tone was perfect.

A great book.
A few pages after I started reading, I decided to also listen to the audiobook.
My heart hung on every word Tom Stechschulte spoke.
McCarthy is truly a master.
He uses words like a sorcerer and captures you with a relentless narrative.
When I reached the last pages I felt as if something broke inside me. A stream of emotions was set off. Tears flowed like a river.
When I finally closed the book and a wet silence came, I felt deeply grateful, like never before in my life.

So I liked this a lot better reading it as an adult. Realizing that's the case for a lot of more mature books I read as a high schooler for class assignments.

My favourite part is where he leaves the dude naked as a baby

I don’t write many reviews. I need to be touched to feel it’s needed, this book does just that. Give it a listen and see if you aren’t.

There's only been 2 other books in my life that I loved so much on the first read that I felt I needed to immediately reread it. This is the third.

Depressing read. Not impressed . The Middle East may face this

I love how much room for interpretation is. In the end, is any of us truly one of the “good guys”? Very touching story of a father’s love for his child.

Bleak yet hopeful
Cloudy yet shining

I can see why this is a popular text for ELA classes. Layers. So many layers.

Very good apocalypse story and the narrator is superb. I recommend.

This book is among my favorites of all time. It's an emotional journey that delves into the depths of human survival behaviours. Prepare to be deeply moved and haunted by its message long after you turn the final page.

Beautifully written and evocative. The narrator does excellent work, giving emotion to the bleakness of the landscape the father and son traverse.
Best to be in solid spirits before embarking on this journey, or at least be prepared for the hardship and poor prospects our beleaguered travellers face down.

One of my favorite audio books yet. It breathes just the right amount of life into a dead world. Well done.

Edit Feb 7 2024

I've listened to this book 3 times since my initial review and I enjoy it more every time I do.

Wow, well written, not sure what I expected…heart wrenching with some hope adjacent

I liked the story. It was gripping and entertaining. Having said that, it was disappointing. I expected complete brilliance but I got bad grammar and completely jumbled writing. The story, not the style, was enjoyable. I couldn't even relate to the characters, I found myself so uncaring of them and really annoyed with the repetition of the dialogue.

Perfect for a rainy day. Or one of those CA days where the sky is full of wildfire smoke. Depressing, yet I couldn't stop reading. I've never seen the movie, maybe I'll give it a watch now that I've read the book.

This book was strange in a way but done in a way that makes you want know what comes next

Little I can say that has not already been said. A must listen, fantastic narration. Incredible book, haunting dialogue. 5 stars.

Thought provoking and an emotional journey that leaves you breathless

This is one of my top 5 books. It's a stark and uncompromising work and reflects Cormac McCarthy gift for direct narrative. Readers of McCarthy's other masterwork Blood Meridian will recall the cadence and sentence construction that is really evident in this book. As pointed out by Harold Bloom, McCarthy's prose is redolent of that in the King James Bible and in his hands this adds to the overall impression of threat and doom, ultimately reversed by the ending where the man dies, but the boy survives with hopeful prospects of some sort of renewal. I can understand that some readers may be disturbed by this book but even so they should recognise the high quality of the writing.

Very good book about the strength of parent/child bond.

The Road never ceases to hold me and remind me how far ahead of it's time it was in telling the truth of human nature. Timeless