The Road (Oprah's Book Club) by Cormac McCarthy Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Road (Oprah's Book Club)
Book Review: Is it too bleak?
Summary: 4 Stars
If you're one of those readers who threw Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure out the window because of it bleak view of humanity, then you would be advised to avoid McCarthy's The Road. It is the most depressing and despairing book I have ever read. As previous reviewers have noted, the stripped down prose is almost poetic in its austerity and fitting for the tale of horror that it tells. The man and boy are not given names, the country doesn't have a name; all has been obliterated in the devastation wrought on the world from some unknown disaster. The idea of survivors searching for salvation or mere hope in a post-apocalyptic world is not new; it has been explored in detail by films and science fiction novels in the 60s and 70s. But now with The Road and Jim Crace's The Pesthouse, there seems to be a revival of this trope perhaps as a result of the US's militarism, terrorism, climate change, etc. My only problem with this novel is that its bleakness is so extreme, grinding the characters and the reader down incessantly, that I often thought it was a pointless exercise in literary nihilism. Compared to the subtlety of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Down and its equally bleak view of humanity, The Road is only one note played over and over, and however beautifully that one note is played by such an accomplished artist, sometimes you just want to cover your ears.Book Review: A Truly Powerful Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
Stunning, an astonishing book. This novel's unrelenting bleakness, its horrificly godless world of death is totally convincing; and its ability to conjure an absolute dread of reading on - made even worse by the father's desperate and primal drive to simply keep his beloved son alive (to "carry the fire") in a dying world where the handful of surviving men and women are reduced to starving lunatics, killing and eating each other - is total. From the first sentence, you are gripped by the love the father feels for his son and then bewildered by the sense of inevitable despair and doom drawing in around them. All too believeable, all too real. There is a real and growing vibe in the world today that this - or something like it - is what the future may look like. This is both an utterly compelling story and a perfect artistic expression of that vibe.Book Review: Bleak but equally bewitching
Summary: 5 Stars
These are times of gigantic anxieties and dread. What McCarthy does with THE ROAD is paint a post-apocalyptic vision, we have a father and son determined to survive in a world where there is nigh on nothing left but barbarity and all consuming grey, yes there are some very tough dark passages but I believe said portrayal is very accurate regards humanity in such an anarchic environment.THE ROAD- is a truly brilliant read and typically superb CORMAC MCCARTHY. HAPPY READING, CHECK IT OUT ! Book Review: A Road Trip Through Hell
Summary: 5 Stars
Cormac Mccarthy's The Road is a dark, post apocalyptic journey through the remnants of the world as we know it, with the faintest flicker of hope at the end.
Destroyed by some never quite explained catastrophe, the Earth has become nearly inhospitable to life. A thick ash smothers everything and hangs in the sky, making a cold, quiet moonscape where things had once been green and alive. Through this nightmare world travels bands of desperate survivors, including an unnamed man and his son. The father's plan is to travel south to warmth and the ocean, where he hopes to find their salvation. Along the way they are confronted by cannibals, thugs and others as adrift as they are, a Darwinian struggle reminiscent to some degree of the lost boys in The Lord of the Flies, but far more sinister and disturbing. In particular, the image of the captives of the cannibals- who are being eaten bit by bit, shrinking grotesquely but kept alive so their flesh remains fresh- is a vision of Hell right out of Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. Calling themselves "the good guys," the father and son still carry a gun- with two bullets- to end their lives if needed rather than suffer a crueler fate. The father also struggles with the ethical dilemma of having to "unteach" his son about compassion and empathy, afraid that the boy- who wants to help those equally in need- will only die in the attempt. This "every man for himself" situation is in stark contrast to everything the father believes, and how the boy has been raised. It's this struggle to hang on to the noble aspects of humanity while surrounded by the worse that makes the novel insightful, haunting, and a riveting read.
Mark Wakely, author of An Audience for Einstein
Book Review: Compassionate Journey of Father & Son
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a futuristic novel where the world has been reduced to ashes and ruins. We don't find out how this happened but the bleakness becomes a contrast for the love between a father and son as they struggle to survive. The novel shows that even after so much is taken from human life, love can still give strength and the will to survive. THE ROAD is Cormac McCarthy's most compassionate book.
It has the small straight-forward prose style of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. The entire story revolves around the unnamed father-son figures. Some may find the novel tedious in parts with repeating sequences of monotonous struggle. However, the repetition is necessary as it reinforces the reality of their struggle, which is grinding and brings an important theme of the novel into focus: How much can you take away from human life before you lose your humanity? Can love overcome this regression to a barbaric state?
The love between the father and son makes this a wonderful book. Another book that I also loved reading is NEXUS: A NEO NOVEL, which is a story of love, empathy and compassion with many psychological and spiritual insights woven into a compelling narrative.