The Road

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A favorite for 2009. It is my first Cormac McCarthy and according to some his most accessible. A man and his boy struggle to survive in an post-apocalyptic world. The world is bleak, cold, and unforgiving. They trudge through living hell. They are hungry. But they carry on with fire inside, a fire that sustains them. What is the fire? Is it love? Is it their humanity? Is it God? Some people rather die than let the fire go out; others, fireless, exist one beastly day at a time. The language is simple but deceptively so. Such elegant sentences, sparse and poetic. There is dialog, but the absence of quotation marks blurs the said with the described, the within with the without. It is like a silent movie, like a dream, or more appropriately a nightmare.

"What is the bravest thing you've ever done?" The boy asks his father.

"The bravest thing I've ever done is getting up this morning."

Love this treasure and looking forward to rediscovering it again some day. View all my reviews >>