Customer Reviews: Read 144 more reviews...
 Inescapably bleak September 29, 2008
An unnamed man and his sun struggle through a post apocalyptic American wasteland. As they struggle towards the coast, they have to deal with cannibals, with disease, thieves and above all the simple day to day challenge of staying fed and sheltered in a scorched earth where ash rains from the sky.
Everything in this unrelenting book is beautifully structured. The title is perfect, it is a "road" book, the journey is the story and the story is the journey. The blasted sparseness of the landscape is reflected in the sparseness of the prose. The characters are flattened, their dialogue is terse and emotionless, the palate in which the world is painted is flat and monochrome, all colour and life crushed out by the terrible grey, fatally wounded world.
I don't think I've ever read such a bleak book, so utterly without hope. Its not that the characters don't have any hope, it's that they don't have any chance, any prospect of hope. In the end one wonders which of the two central characters is luckier in his fate.
The book has been described as a wake up call in a world threatened by global warming. Maybe, but it is really about the enduring strength of human love in extreme adversity.
While being excellent, it doesn't quite qualify for five stars in my book because it is more like an abstract painting or a tone poem than a fully rounded novel. It gives an extremely evocative picture, but ultimately the narrative arc is extremely thin.
So recommended, if extremely harrowing.
 Sensational September 29, 2008
I started reading this book about a month ago, but put it down after fifty pages. I could tell that I needed to read this in long sittings, and not twenty minutes here and there. So then I read it again on holiday.
It is not an easy read - you have to work at it. McCarthy's prose is stripped back to the very bones, much punctuation is missing and there are no chapters. And the book is repetitive - the man and the boy get hungry, look for food and somewhere safe to stay, find them and do the same again.
But the overall effect is shattering. The world he conjures up in the aftermath of the apocalypse is stunningly realised, and the bleakness of life, the descent of humanity back into savagery and the man and the boy carrying the flame is almost too much at times. There is a lot of bleakness, a lot of misery and despair (and no, not many laughs). But always there is an indefatigability and a flicker of hope.
I've not been affected as much by a book for a long long time. The starkness of the writing and the bleakness of much of the book will be offputting for some, but this is worth the effort and I cannot recommend it too highly.
Nightmarish post-apocalyptic vision- demands to be read September 9, 2008
Not for the faint-hearted this is an excellent book describing one man and his son's journey south though a post-apocalyptic American landscape. It is several years since "it" happened and the land is scorched, the sun is invisible though the blanket of ash and corpses lay burned into the tarmac. Nothing grows and the few survivors have become savage cannibals. The man and boy exist as the other's reason for continuing their hopeless struggle for survival and it is their humanity that redeems the book and their world. McCarthy's stripped down, deconstructed style has been criticised but I think it works perfectly here. I know it wasn't the authors intention but I think the book could have been longer with more details on the nature of the holocaust (we are never told) and how society and mankind had degenerated to the extent it had. Try to read this one sitting if you can to experience it full emotional impact but beware - you may not sleep too well...
A heart of Darkness September 8, 2008
If you're a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, then this should be high on your reading list. A man and boy's struggle to survive in a never-mentioned worldwide catastrophy is vividly and poignantly written.
If you're looking for a light read, this certainly isn't it - but this vision of hell on earth is certainly a memorable and engaging journey.
On a lighter note - after reading 'The Road' you'll never look at supermarket shopping trolleys in the same way ever again...
A great read September 5, 2008
This was the first McCarthy book I'd read. I bought it based on a Wish List recommendation and I would just like to say thank you, thank you, thank you. Once I got used to the author's quirky style, it became a thoroughly enjoyable read. He uses suspense very well.
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