The Road
by Cormac McCarthy
Knopf Publishing 2006
241 pages Hardcover
Sometimes I am very bad with jockeying books around on my reading list. Some move to the top and others continually move up and down but don't get read. I am sorry to say that the later happened to The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I received the book in with about 3 others and it sat on the self and was passed over many times as new books piled in around it. Last month it started appearing on several lists as the top book of 2006, so I dug out my copy. Not reading this book right away was the biggest mistake I could make.
McCarthy's book is unlike anything I have ever read. McCarthy has written some dark , dreary books in the past, and this one follows suit. But the mood is what makes the story and just drags you along page by page through its sparse prose storytelling.
McCarthy has written a story that doesn't bog you down with tons of back-story and character development. The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, this we know. What has exactly happened and why is never revealed. The landscapes is often described as gray and dead, ash falling like rain, no animals, no trees. We follow the travels and trials of a father and his son. No names, no ages and only small hints of thier past is ever revealed. This is actually a good thing. You find yourself totally engrossed by the characters only referred to as The Man and The Boy. You are thrust into thier world of hardship from the first page and it never lets up. Your spirits raise when they stumble upon good fortune and your nerves jump when they come across the horrors that this new world has spawned. It is a tight and hard-written story that keeps you on edge till the end, and I challenge the strongest reader not to slump into thier chair during the last chapter, which you know is coming but spend the entire story hoping it won't.
Cormac McCarthy has made a new american masterpiece which in my opinion should be on everyones reading list for years to come.
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