Name: Vojtech's review of The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Item: The Road
Rating: 5
Author: Vojtech

Cormac McCarthy

In a novel set in an indefinite, futuristic, post-apocalyptic world, a father and his young son make their way through the ruins of a devastated American landscape, struggling to survive and preserve the last remnants of their own humanity. 250,000 first printing.

The Road

Chey

I will do what I promised, he whispered. No matter what. I will not send you into the darkness alone. 

She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift. 

Kyler Phillips

You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget

Jeremy Fiest

He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

Sophia Bowers

Jemima Scott

With an introduction by novelist John Banville. In a burned-out America, a father and his young son walk under a darkened sky, heading slowly for the coast. They have no idea what, if anything, awaits them there. The landscape is destroyed, nothing moves save the ash on the wind and cruel, lawless men stalk the roadside, lying in wait. Attempting to survive in this brave new world, the young boy and his protector have nothing but a pistol to defend themselves. They must keep walking. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Road is an incandescent novel, the story of a remarkable and profoundly moving journey. In this unflinching study of the best and worst of humankind, Cormac McCarthy boldly divines a future without hope, but one in which, miraculously, this young family finds tenderness. An exemplar of post-apocalyptic writing, The Road is a true modern classic, a masterful, moving and increasingly prescient novel.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Vojtech

Although it hurt emotionally, I truly enjoyed the way this book discussed Post-apocalyptic trauma and grief. It was refreshing to know more about the characters feelings than the actual disaster that got them there.

Bonus points for the imagery staying vivid without long, boring descriptions. 

Although it hurt emotionally, I truly enjoyed the way this book discussed Post-apocalyptic trauma and grief. It was refreshing to know more about the characters feelings than the actual disaster that got them there.

Bonus points for the imagery staying vivid without long, boring descriptions. 

how can one book be so boring and yet fast paced at the same time.

Megan Christensen

charisa

ok, who in the world shelved this as YA in the chinatown library?? if i read this as a preteen i would not have been able to sleep for a week straight. 

in a word: BLEAK. so very bleak. there’s something hemingway-esque about mccarthy’s prose that elevates the feeling of threadbare hope. it’s choppy and sparse, like the very breath of the father and his son. i wouldn’t care for it in most other contexts, but it lays appropriate ground for a brutal apocalypse. 

i’m still trying to decide if this was an ultimately hopeful story, or one slanting towards despair. at the heart of it, i think, is the quiet yet unshakable belief that love is still valid despite the loss of everything else, and that love can provide purpose until the very end. so yes, bleak, but also illuminated by a small, inextinguishable flame!

thinking about morality in survival as well: is there a certain point at which survival becomes inherently selfish? how do you weigh your own suffering and survival against that of others?

Wynter

The Road is a peculiar book. I was simultaneously intrigued and bored by it. The particular writing style, where McCarthy omits all punctuation, but the period, works out well for me. I thought it helped me get deeper into the story without any visual markers to distract me. The action, even though slowly unfolding, is cinematic and vivid. You can see every gruesome and grimy detail with ease. At the same time I couldn't get on board with the main characters. Both the man and the boy annoyed me at times, especially through their stilted dialogue. I thought of giving it a three stars rating, but the end really did touch me, so I'm bumping it up a star. I'm curious to see who the contenders for that year's Pulitzer were competing against The Road.

In a novel set in an indefinite, futuristic, post-apocalyptic world, a father and his young son make their way through the ruins of a devastated American landscape, struggling to survive and preserve the last remnants of their own humanity.

Julian

An invasive heart wrenching story about a father and son alone in a dystopian wasteland. A book that will keep you on the edge of your seat with anticipation, and leave you crying, yet satisfied.

Michael Springer

Well, it's not often you can call a Cormac McCarthy book "sweet." It's also not often you're tempted to call a post-apocalyptic novel filled with rapist cannibals "sweet." Yet, The Road is surprisingly hopeful (on a Cormac McCarthy scale), presenting a world filled with the same unfathomable darkness and mystery that characterizes most of McCarthy's work, yet showing two people who struggle on regardless of that darkness: a father and his son, who "carry the flame." 

We never learn why nearly everything is dead. As is often the case with McCarthy's work, he leaves out the details that aren't essential. What we do know is that a man survived a huge event that killed nearly everything, and he has a young son. The son was born after the event happened, and only knows what he's heard from his father about the world before. With a map that is so old that it's a bunch of numbered pieces, they trace their path to the coast. They travel toward the coast for the sake of having some destination, although they don't know what they'll find there.

As always, McCarthy's writing is evocative, sparse and with the customary lack of punctuation. He could write books with no plot and just description and they'd still be worth reading. But the relationship between the father and his son is what makes The Road such a terrific book. The dialogue between them is just so fraggin good. McCarthy doesn't need to tell you anything about their relationship, about their feelings, about their struggles: it all comes through naturally in their conversation. It's all so believable, so natural, and often so hilarious. 

The father is struggling to survive, but he's more concerned about keeping his son alive. The son is often angered by the fact that they can't save everyone they come across. The father often makes small concessions to the son, but when they come across a starving old man, he refuses to do more than give him a meal and let him stay with them for one night. He remains a realist about their very limited resources and their ability to truly trust others. 

The biggest threats are starvation and dehydration, but they also have to watch out for the organized groups of cannibals who roam the road. It seems that more humans survived the apocalypse than any other kind of animal, or else the humans were able to survive the aftermath better. Either way, many people have turned to cannibalism, since it is the most readily available type of food. This makes some of the meetings with other people out on the road quite scary, since our main characters don't know what to expect from any chance encounters.

So, why is it five stars? I don't often give books a full five, but I feel The Road deserves it because of a combination of factors. 1: The characters are full and rich and believable and I loved them. 2: This is the strongest depiction of a post-apocalyptic world that I've encountered in fiction or in film. You never need to suspend your disbelief; everything feels too real for the fantasy to be even slightly fractured. 3: The book is concise, taking less than 300 pages to tell its complete story (which has a surprisingly strong ending considering the bleakness of the world). And, 4: looking back, I can't find anything at all to fault. I recommend this one to any and everyone.

Matt Stein

My review: https://mattstein.com/books/the-road

John Banville

Road

I've read and played my share of post-apocalyptic books and games, but I've never experienced a story as bleak and desolate as that of the boy and the man on the road. A haunting, almost uncomfortable experience.

Frederik De Bosschere

Jake Yard

This was the first of McCarthy’s work I’ve read. A majority of this book is quite repetitive and focuses on the relationship between the characters. It does do a great job of placing you in this dystopian land and although there are some great parts to this book but in-between I thought it felt a little slow.

Will I read another McCarthy book? Probably not anytime soon…

Great book to read but definitely not for the weak hearted. The ending was not my favourite. 

Ksenija 

Great book to read but definitely not for the weak hearted. The ending was not my favourite. 



Not the style of writing I am used to which kind of threw me off. It felt more like poetry in some places which isn't inherently bad but it felt odd to me. A few people have pointed out the writing style as a reason they didn't finish or weren't overly fond of the book which I think is fair. 

Overall, I enjoyed this book and I managed to read it in about 3 days. I already kind of knew what to expect so maybe that's why it didn't hit me as much as others. It's a bleak and raw story but it isn't to the point you feel like it's beating you over the head with it or that there's no point in reading it.

Gabriele Mikell

Not the style of writing I am used to which kind of threw me off. It felt more like poetry in some places which isn't inherently bad but it felt odd to me. A few people have pointed out the writing style as a reason they didn't finish or weren't overly fond of the book which I think is fair. 

Overall, I enjoyed this book and I managed to read it in about 3 days. I already kind of knew what to expect so maybe that's why it didn't hit me as much as others. It's a bleak and raw story but it isn't to the point you feel like it's beating you over the head with it or that there's no point in reading it.

This book changed my relationship with reading. Incredible story and the most profound writing I’ve ever experienced. I can express how inspired I was after reading this book.

David Pascuzzo

Prashanth Srivatsa

Heart wrenching. Terribly beautiful, and although the dialogues get repetitive over a period of time, the conversation between the old man and the survivors will remain as one of the most brilliant ones I've ever read.
 
One of those books that will look back after many decades and tell us all, "I told you so."

angie

Jeannette Ordas

Boy that will teach me to not watch the movie of a book I want to read before reading said book. That said, I really loved this book but I'm sure I would have loved it a half star more if I hadn't watched the movie already, danggit. 4 1/2 stars for being as dark and grey and cold and horrible as a post-apocalyptic world should be while trying to hold on to the fire.

tiff

Yes. The sentences were short and choppy, full of supposedly uninteresting detail. We see the man- he is whittling wood to make fake bullets to fill the empty chambers in the pistol they are carrying for protection. We get the very minute details of this action. It has turned some off of the book, along with the metaphors that seemed to be piled one on the other, but to me that was the charm of the book. The everyday encumbrances of the man and the boy, living in a semi-inhabitable land laid to waste by what I assume to be a world-wide nuclear holocaust (don't quote me on this- there was mention of fire in a flashback and people are burnt into the macadam in other parts of the book which is where I'm drawing my conclusions from). Everyday it takes courage to get up, to move on, to starve, to be thirsty, to look for shelter, to smell badly, to kill others or be killed. The details were necessary, for the most part, to ensure the reader feels what the man and boy call "the fire" that they both are carrying. Get to that in a moment.

I had to look up words, which is no drawback if you are reading on an ereader (at least not for me). I thought that using some of the words like "truncheoned" which don't exist anymore was a bit of pretense on McCarthy's part but he's such a brilliant writer that I excused it.

The man lied to the boy a lot. The boy was precocious and knew quite a bit about life and to some this seemed implausible, especially for a child so young. But it was important to the narrative, to show how a brave man, father, protector knew so little about their existence. The boy was my favorite character, and at the end I almost cried for him. But I digress.

The fire that they carried. The fire that the man's wife didn't have or want to have. The will to survive in a dead world. The good guys. To get up everyday knowing existence wasn't to exist, that everything has died or will die someday. That fire was the whole point of the book. The details, the precocious little boy, that was all great and kept me reading but the heart of the book, the light in all that death was the will to survive and carry on when all is lost. I don't know what I'd do if I survived a nuclear holocaust. I'm not sure I'm brave enough to keep going or brave enough to kill myself. What I do know is this book was magnificent and I will be rereading it for years to come.

andrea

dnf-ing this at 50% even if i should finish it for class because very few times in my life have i encountered a prose so tedious, repetitive, and insipid. everything about this book is so dull and flat, oh my god. i just can't bring myself to continue

Janice Hopper

I wasn't going to read thousands book because I thought it would be too bleak for me. I don't do well with bleak these days. But a Twitter exchange with someone whose book opinions I respect convinced me to give it a try. 

I read it in one sitting. And yes, it's bleak, but it's not soul-destroying bleakness. I don't see much future for the characters in the novel. There's a saying I think of sometimes: "The end is in the beginning. Nevertheless, we go on." The story in this book is kinda like that.

Georgia Carr

This book just wasn't for me, and it was really hard to finish it. It started well, but quickly got repetitive and annoying. 

I can't understand why there are no speech marks or apostrophes, either. I mean, I know it's supposed to add to the atmosphere of the book, but really? Ignoring basic grammar to create realism? Nah. No thank you.

Sam Missingham

This book didn't just leave an impression on me, it made me weep for humanity. I can honestly say no other book has ever left me feeling so bereft and gutted to my stomach.

La strada

gio☕

3.5/5

Era un po' di tempo che aspettavo di leggere questo libro, di cui ho sentito parlare per lo piů bene. Non avevo idea, assolutamente idea, di che cosa parlasse; sapevo solo che c'erano un padre, un figlio e una strada.
Non avevo aspettative di nessun genere, né in positivo, né in negativo. Non so esattamente cosa pensare di questo libro, se non che è stato, insieme alla maggior parte dei libri che sto leggendo in questo 2022, un grande "mah". Ho faticato a proseguire la lettura, lettura che, visto il numero di pagine, si potrebbe finire anche in un solo giorno (infatti oggi, quando l'ho finito, ho letto da pagina 70 fino all'ultima, sforzandomi di concluderlo, perché, davvero, era solo un pensiero in più che avevo, un pensiero fisso e disturbante).
Mi ha incuriosito? Non direi, no. Mi sono piaciute le prime pagine, ma poi ho avuto la sensazione che, a mano a mano che andavo avanti a leggere, diventasse tutto troppo ripetitivo: loro camminano, trovano una casa/rifugio, prendono cibo e utensili utili, incontrano o morti o cattivi e camminano di nuovo e tutto ricomincia da capo. E tutto questo in un mondo finito, post-apocalittico, che però non viene mai palesato come tale. Si dice solo che tutto era finito e che non esisteva più niente, più nessuno, a parte pochi, pochissimi esseri umani. Perché non c'è una vera trama, un intreccio narrativo, uno sviluppo della storia. Perché forse, in realtà, non c'è affatto una storia e non c'è la volontà di presentarla come tale. C'è una narrazione, una breve e poetica - e questo è l'aspetto più lodevole del libro - narrazione di fatti avvenuti in un arco di tempo imprecisato in un luogo altrettanto imprecisato. Ma è perfetto così, perché non serve precisare proprio niente, non qui, non dove non esiste più né tempo né spazio, non dove l'apocalisse c'è stata e il mondo è finito.
Ho letto di persone a cui ha turbato lo stile della scrittura. A me, invece, è ciò che è piaciuto di più. Mi piacevano questi dialoghi, questa sorta di flusso di coscienza (e mi è piaciuto tanto perché mi ha ricordato la mia Virginia Woolf), dialoghi che dominano la storia, che la tengono viva, che la fanno scorrere. Sono dialoghi vivi, più importanti di qualunque cosa che, in questo libro, dialogo non è. È con le parole dette a voce che si capisce cosa sta accadendo e chi sono i protagonisti: padre e figlio. Un padre che, in principio, ci viene presentato esclusivamente come "l'uomo", e un figlio che, all'inizio, è solo "il bambino". Non li si presenta immediatamente come padre e figlio e ho trovato interessante come la loro relazione possa rappresentare, per esteso, l'universale interazione del mondo adulto con quello infantile, senza che si sia necessariamente legati dal sangue, dalla parentela. Ma, a parte questo, il rapporto padre-figlio è la vera bellezza del libro, a parer mio, sebbene sia un rapporto quasi totalmente privo di evoluzione, come tutto il resto della narrazione, d'altronde.
Ci sono diversi punti interrogativi che mi porterò dietro sempre, probabilmente, riguardo la vera e più profonda intenzione, lo scopo di McCarthy donandoci questo suo libro. Ho un conto in sospeso con questa storia, devo prendermi il tempo necessario per capirla, per dirmi "ok, ecco il perché di tutto", anche se, forse, qualcosa ho già capito.
Un'ultima cosa, però: la poesia, la musicalità dei paragrafi... Vale la pena leggerlo solo per questo.

This book was a very straight forward, yet incredible story. Had to do 4.5/5 mainly because No Country For Old Men by Cormac is a 10/5 stars for me and this didn’t quite hit that mark. 

Laura Walden

Started reading to calm my mind and fall asleep in the evening. Finished at 4 AM with my heart pounding. Gripping. Dark.

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The Road by Cormac McCarthy

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