The Road Reviews

• Brilliant and endearing and ultimately uplifting.

  
  By A2TD5HWC4KPATL on 2006-09-27
  THE ROAD is a tremendous achievement, multi-layered, yet with enough surface story to attract mainstream readers. It resonates with classic allusions, simple parables, endearing moments, aphorisms, even some old testament language a la BLOOD MERIDIAN. In fact all of McCarthy's earlier novels are echoed here.
  
  As with NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, all of the doomsday clocks, both personal and communal, stop at 1:17, a reference to John 1:17 in the Book of Revelations. As with his previous novel, McCarthy names love as the one value worth living for in this vale of tears, the last thing to go.
  
  Comic relief is provided in the form of Ely, the only named character in the book. Readers will have to judge for themselves whether they think that Ely is the prophet Elijah, Christ in ragged disguise, Buddha on the Road, or just a funny old man who speaks in koans.
  
  THE ROAD will remind some of Jose Saramago's BLINDNESS, which won the Nobel Prize for that deserving author. Others will liken the beautiful writing to the very best of Ernest Hemingway--with the understatement one finds in BIG, TWO-HEARTED RIVER and THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA.
  
  Cliched? Not in this reader's eyes. Of course the great themes here have been rendered before in the classics, and books are made of books. I immediately recognized Homer's ghosts of hades in here, pointing and pleading and crying for help.
  
  What is the quote in THE ROAD on page 110? "Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it." Which resonates to a quote from Marcus Aurielius, saying that a man ought to live his life as if borrowed, and that he ought to be prepared at any time to give it back, saying--here, I thank you for this life which I have had in my possession.
  
  I found it uplifting. A testament to the condition of humanity and the nature of death and the riddle of existence. Universal themes, the greatest themes in our literature.
  
  

• The future is now...

  
  By A8F2AZWB20X1H on 2007-03-28
  "The Road" is a work of stunning, savage, heartbreaking beauty. Set in the post-apocalyptic hell of an unending nuclear winter, Cormac McCarthy writes about a nameless man and his young son, wandering through a world gone crazy; bleak, cold, dark, where the snow falls down gray; moving south toward the coast, looking somewhere, anywhere, for life and warmth. Nothing grows in this blasted world; people turn into cannibals to survive. We don't know if we're looking at the aftermath of a nuclear war, or maybe an extinction level event -- an asteroid or a comet; McCarthy deliberately doesn't tell us, and we come to realize it doesn't matter anyway. Whether man or nature threw a wild pitch, the world is just as dead.
  
  The boy's mother is a suicide, unable to face living in a world where everything's gone gray and dead. Keep on living and you'll end up raped and murdered along with everybody else, she tells the man before she eats a bullet. The man and his son are "each the other's world entire"; they have only each other, they live for each other, and their intense love for each other will help them survive. At least for a while.
  
  But survival in this brave new world is a dicey prospect at best; the boy and the man are subjected to sights no one should ever have to see. Every day is a scavenger hunt for food and shelter and safety from the "bad guys", the marauding gangs who enslave the weak and resort to cannibalism for lack of any other food. We are the good guys, the man assures his son. Yet in their rare encounters with other living human beings, the man resorts to primitive survivalism, refusing help to a lost child and a starving man, living only for himself and his son, who is trying to hold onto whatever humanity he has left. It's in these chance encounters with other people, even more than their interaction with each other, that we see them for who they really are. The boy is a radiantly sweet child, caring, unselfish, wanting and needing to reach out to others, even though this bleak, blasted world is the only environment he's ever known; the father, more cautious, more bitter, has let the devastation enwrap him until all he cares about is himself and his son. And to hell with everybody else.
  
  Their journey to the coast is an unending nightmare through the depths of hell and the only thing that holds them together is their love for each other. When one is ready to give up, the other refuses to let him. I won't let you go into the darkness alone, the man reassures his son. But ultimately, as the boy finds out, everyone is on his own, and all you can do is keep on keeping on.
  
  McCarthy has proven himself a master of minimalism; with a style as bleak as the stripped terrain the man and the boy travel through, but each sentence polished as a gem, he takes us into the harsh reality of a dying world. The past is gone, dead as the landscape all around them, and the present is the only reality. There is no later, McCarthy says. This is later. Deep down the man knows there is nothing better to hope for down the road, even though he keeps them both slogging down it, only to keep his son alive. And we keep slogging down that road with them, hoping against hope that around the next corner or five miles down the line, maybe there is something, anything, to make survival worth while.
  
  Living in such a hell, why would anyone want to survive? The mother made her decision; she checked out long ago. We come to the end of this book totally drained, enervated, devastated, but curiously uplifted. Because as long as there is love, McCarthy tells us, maybe there is something to live for, and as the book shows us at the end, maybe there is a even little bit of hope.
  
  Judy Lind
  
  
  

• Mass Psychology?

  
  By A3L46HXO3GKHLV on 2007-04-24
  Throughout these reviews and elsewhere, I see words like profound, masterpiece, moving, Pulitzer Prize, Oprah. I must admit that these descriptions caused me to buy this book. But I must completely disagree (and here come the comments about how shallow or unintelligent I must be!) I should know by know that most all of Oprah's selections are very depressing and disturbing. And the Pulitzer certainly doesn't mean "a good read". McCarthy's writing style is very distracting. Many of you have defended his lack of punctuation and his use of sentence fragments. I'm sorry, but as my eyes are scanning the written page, it disrupts my thoughts, as I try to figure out why he "didnt" use the apostrophe there, but "he'd" already used it here, and his words like "they nooned in the middle of the road". Also, an author has the right to write a depressing story, but this one was too dark and dreary, left too many things unknown or unexplained (more comments about how shallow I am), and brought no inspiration or sense of redemption, to make the reading somehow worthwhile. As I complained throughout the book of all these issues, my wife kept pleading for me to just quit reading it. But by gosh, I was determined to see it through, to maybe finally understand all the hoopla and finally see where it was headed. I shouldn't have wasted the time.
  
  

• "This is the way the world ends..."

  
  By A3CE57YNGVWBQN on 2006-09-26
  
  In a barren, ashen landscape that was once the United States of America, a weary man and his young son are traveling south in search of the ocean. They scavenge for food and shelter, and they must constantly avoid marauding bands of fellow survivors who would prey on them. The one thing that sustains them on their way is their ferocious love for each other. THE ROAD is the story of their heartbreaking journey.
  
  Every now and then, when we need reminding, a great writer shows us one possible future for our species if we continue on the path to self-destruction. In 1957, Nevil Shute gave us ON THE BEACH, and now, 50 years later, Cormac McCarthy has given us an eloquent new version of the same cautionary tale. We didn't listen then. Perhaps we can learn something now.
  
  I have rarely been so moved by a work of literature. To call this the most important novel of 2006 is an understatement. Read it and weep. Read it and be uplifted. Just read it--before it's too late.
  
  
  
  

• What a waste of time and money

  
  By AW7UAKAVH3EYX on 2007-09-01
  Synopsis: A man and a boy push a shopping cart with a bad wheel down a road. The road is covered with ashes, though there is no explanation as to the origin of the ashes. It rains. The man coughs. The little boy whines. They have bad shoes.
  
  After a couple pages, the man and boy push the same shopping cart with the same bad wheel down the same road. They're hungry. It rains some more. The think they see someone else on the road. They see a house. They build a fire in a ditch. They wrap their feet in cloth. They pass through a town. There are lots of ashes.
  
  After a couple pages the man and boy have trouble pushing the shopping cart with the bad wheel down the road. It's cold and wet. They avoid someone. They wrap their feet in coats. They see a house and find something disgusting to eat. It snows. There are ashes everywhere.
  
  A ragtag army comes up behind the man and the boy pushing the shopping cart with the bad wheel down the road. They get off the road. They kill a man. They run away. The man thinks he knows where they are on the map. They wrap their feet in a plastic tarp. They return for the shopping cart with the bad wheel and push it down the road in the rain. Not so many ashes, but they will be back. They build a fire in the woods.
  
  They build a fire in a fireplace in an empty house. The man tries to fix the wheel on the shopping cart so he and the boy can push it down the road more easily. It works better for a couple pages. They build a fire under a bridge. The man isn't sure where they are on the map. They are hungry but refuse to kill and eat anyone, though that's what everyone else seems to be doing. The rain and ashes are back.
  
  The man finds a trove that would last months, maybe years. They don't have to build a fire because they have a stove. The man has no idea where they are on the map. The little boy fails to close the gas valve properly. They don't build a fire beside the road. They load their shopping cart with the wheel that's gone bad again and leave everything behind them that they can't carry and push the shopping cart down the road. They have bathed. They have new shoes. It's raining. They are ash deep in the remains of a fire.
  
  The wheel gets worse as the man and boy push the shopping cart down the road. The man coughs. They build a fire in the road. The man knows where they are on the map. They avoid some people they see. They avoid some people who aren't there. The boy whines. They meet and feed someone on the road who says his name's not Ely. They continue down the road.
  
  They go through some towns. They see some houses. They push the shopping cart. They get a wheelbarrow. It rains. The earth quakes. Lightning flashes. They build a fire under a bridge again. The ashes make things tougher. Did I mention their shoes? Their shoes are worn out by the ashes and the rain and the snow and pushing the shopping cart down the road. They wrap their feet in layer upon layer of whatever the author can think of. The man isn't sure where they are on the map. The shopping cart has a bad wheel.
  
  They reach the ocean. The man ransacks a beached sailing ship. He coughs. The boy loses their pistol. They find the pistol. It's dark. It rains. The ocean isn't blue. There are ashes as far as the eye can see. Someone tries to rob them. The man forces the robber to strip naked and they leave him. The boy whines. They return to succor the naked thief. He's not there. The boy whines again.
  
  The man coughs and dies. Another man shows up. The boy goes with the other man.
  
  Now you don't have to suffer through 241 pages of rain, ashes and pushing a shopping cart with a bad wheel down some stupid road.
  
  You're welcome.
  
  What I thought: Gryke. Discalced. Mastic. Meconium. Rachitic. Siwash. Parsible. Woad. Kerf. Chary. Firedrake. Palimpsest. Middens. Pampooties. Salitter. Dolmen stones. Crozzled.
  
  I read a fair amount. I have pretty good reading, writing and speaking vocabularies. The above words are in The Road. Two of them I could not find even in the OED. The ones I could look up mostly had mundane meanings. I like books that stretch my vocabulary, but not books that stretch my vocabulary to no end. Why is "chary" better than "wary," which is what chary means. Why is "gryke" better than its preferred spelling grike and why return to the 18th century to tell me there was a crevasse in the limestone cliff. I don't find stumbling over unnecessarily obscure words conducive to my reading pleasure, nor am I impressed by big words.
  
  I understand that The Road has been favorably compared to Stephen King's "The Stand." "The Stand," in one of its editions, is more than 1300 pages long. It's a brilliant book. "The Road" couldn't hold "The Stand's" jock. That being said, "The Stand" is not the best end-of-the-world book. King got his idea from George Stewart's masterpiece, "Earth Abides."
  
  "Earth Abides" is the quintessential end-of-the-world book. It reflects reality. It is a great story, It invites the reader to think. In its most recent edition it is 368 pages.
  
  If you are looking for the best in post apocalyptic literature, no one will ever be able to top "Earth Abides!" (This message brought to you by Post, the official Cereal of the Apocalypse!)
  
  If you are looking for a book with little punctuation, no attributions, no chapters, etc. stick with "The Road" If you want to read a real book, read just about anything else. Maybe if enough people buy "The Road," McCarthy can buy a typewriter that has a working comma key, apostrophe key, quotation marks, etc. That's not enough of an incentive for you to spend any amount of money on this book. I am ashamed to have to tell my wife I paid money for it.
  
  This is worse than a bad book.
  
  Your mileage may vary.
  
  There was one noteworthy moment in "The Road. On page 145 an old man notes, "Where man can't live, gods fare no better." You just dodged another bullet. I told you the story above. You know the one vaguely insightful line. Don't send me any money, but next time you're in a book store and you see someone considering this book, warn them. That will be thanks enough.
  
  By the bye, this is Oprah's next book. I bet she loves it.
  
  
• Are We Still The Good Guys
  By A1TPW86OHXTXFC on 2007-03-28
  
  'Concurrent with keeping his son alive is the more metaphysical challenge of sustaining his son's innate goodness while forcing him to witness the corruption of all moral behavior. "Are we still the good guys?" the boy asks in moments of confusion and shock. His father insists they are. "This is what good guys do," he tells him. "They keep trying. They don't give up." Why, then, his son asks, won't he help the stragglers they run across instead of running from them or shooting at them? "We should go to him, Papa. We could get him and take him with us. . . . I'd give that little boy half of my food." How to explain the necessity of abandoning others to certain death (or worse, in one particularly terrifying scene) while maintaining that they're "the good guys," the ones "carrying the fire"? Washington Post
  
  Cormac Mccarthy has given us a glimpse of a world none of us want to see or visit, but we are there. It is desolate, singulatory, stark, bleak; all of these words and more are needed to describe a world after a nuclear explosion. We are left to imagine the events, the place, and the time. All we have are these two souls, dad and son, no names. They are moving from one place to another to get to the coast, why, we do not know, are left to wonder. Along the way Mccarthy describes the world we never want to see. Smoldering even after a few years, everything black and stripped of any semblance. Not many people, and those they meet, they are afraid of. Looters, and murderers and eaters of flesh. These two souls, father and son, the two evidences that love can keep you going, can keep you on the right path, and can keep you "One of the good guys". There is not much to keep you going or to keep you safe. Death, no food, no shelter, no clothing, harsh and cold environment, only your wits, and then it is hard to keep them together. A harsh and cold path and if it is what we have to face, Cormac Mccarthy has given us the most beautiful prose and surreal writing.
  
  This is a book to be read by everyone. This is a book to be remembered, to be revered and to be kept in the recesses of our brains, to come out only when necessary. This book begs to be discussed. So many nuances, so many allegories, and so many scenes that are reminiscent, but still new.
  
  "He knew only that the child was his warrant," it says of the father and his mission. "He said: if he is not the word of God, God never spoke." The love of a father and his son, the greatest love of all.
  Highly, highly recommended. prisrob 10-14-06
  
  No Country for Old Men
  
  Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
  
  
  
  
  
• A Dark, Lyrical Meditation on Love's Dedication
  By A38VQ2TIPPBKNN on 2007-09-28
  "The nights were blinding cold and casket black and the long reach of the morning had a terrible silence to it."
  
  "...Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland."
  
  I neither buy nor read collections of poetry. I can count the poems I know, at least the non-limerick ones, on a single hand. I'm not a fan of poetry, and I truly see much of it as overblown, a good thing taken to a ridiculously inflated extreme. This book isn't poetry, but it's also not pure narrative. It's somewhere in the gray between, and I enjoyed every single page of it.
  
  McCarthy had me on the 14th line when I read "granitic beast." No, I didn't have to be told this was a reference to stone. Its use here, early in the work, deliberate, familiar yet uncommon, communicated to me exactly what this book would be about, and more importantly how it would be told, and I couldn't wait to ingest it. The contemplated and intentional use of this word in this place told me of texture and color and temperature, and its context told me of fear, uncertainty, cruelty, and the close specter of menace. I was hooked before the first page was done.
  
  I enjoyed this book's writing style immensely, its story simple and told in a manner that came to me clearly, instantly creating depth with a minimum of prose. Words like "envaccuuming," and phrases like "iscocline of death" were absolutely brilliant--I bite my hand melodramatically wishing I'd written them. This highly evocative austerity was mirrored in the father's and the son's conversations, in which so little was said, but in which I was seeing absolutely clearly the cant of a head, a look in the eyes, the faintest curl of smile. I was reminded very happily of the magnificent work of James Dickey, especially To the White Sea (Delta World War II Library).
  
  And the wonderfully lyrical story unfolded. No, I didn't need quotation marks or crucial apostrophes. There was never any question what was happening, who was saying what or where the story was headed. Honestly, do they care about proper punctuation in the wasteland? I didn't miss a thing, and the modestly different narrative presentation didn't faze me in the least. In fact, it reminded me instantly of e e cummings. Ah, reluctantly back to poetry. Later on when the pair made it to the sea, and the prose touched on "...shuttling..," instantly T. S. Eliot's classic came to mind.
  
  I very much enjoyed the father, an object lesson in survival and just what that takes. He not only was educated, but also remembered it and knew how and when to apply it. He was inventive, attentive and observant, and deliberately learned from every experience. He anticipated, adapted and showed the courage to take immediate action, having thought through consequences beforehand. He was no MacGyver, but from the opening minutes of the crisis he knew what was at hand; his survival, and his son's, were due to his seriousness and intelligence and his application of them.
  
  This book is not about the end of the world. It's not about nuclear winter, man's inevitable murder of the planet, the inherent barbarity of man, none of that. This book is about the only thing that matters, a parent's love for a child, and what at the absolutely basic level of survival you can and cannot do for those whom you treasure most, what you will go through and what you must decide upon for them to have all they need and deserve. This book is about the rapture and the agony of parenthood. It took me two nights to read this book, and both nights after midnight when I reluctantly put it down, I went upstairs to re-tuck-in my daughter and my son, and to kiss them in their sleep, through the silent tears of adoration this book brought forth.
  
  This unpleasantly dark, ominous book reminded me of a few crucial things: My daughter and my son are the most incredible and important things I have ever done or will ever do. Their well-being is never assured, and I can never, ever stop looking out for them and teaching them what I know of their world. One day I will move on, and they must be ready when that happens.
  
  Bottom line: This is not a cheery, happy, frothy and light read. It is cold and hard and painful. But there is joy in it. Be ecstatic it is only a story, that tonight you sleep in a bed in a house, with food, water, and your dog on the hearth. Be aware of and happy that you are reading this expertly rendered, a magnificently crafted work of highly evocative prose, and look forward to the next one, whatever the subject.
  
  
• A Layered Grey Snow Story.
  By A1IHT31N8RLPN8 on 2008-06-08
  The story is set in a post-catastrophe world. It is a story of a nameless man & his young boy travelling through a dark chaotic society. There is a bit of the TV series "Dark Angel" without any angels & the feel of "A Farewell To Arms" that permeates the scenes. Here nothing grows, people turn to cannibalism, & the boys mom kills herself. The man & his son are each others whole world; every day is a brutal trial for survival. This is a desolate "Lord Of The Flies" world, where the strong enslave the meek.
  
  In their southern journey to the coast{we are not told why}, there are times when the bitter father refuses to help others in need while his son is a selfless, giving soul. The father becomes consumed with the devestation around him while his son holds onto whatever humanity he can. "This is the heart of the story."
  
  Down deep in his soul the man knows there is little hope for the future, he lives solely to keep his son alive. The formers parental angst is well crafted by the authors detailed prose. However, between the eternal bleekness of the story & lack of dialogue I can't give it more than 3 stars. I do recommend it as a fairly fast read despite the picture it paints of hopelessness.
  
  
• I can't believe I spent $24 on this dog.
  By AW7UAKAVH3EYX on 2007-05-29
  Synopsis: A man and a boy push a shopping cart with a bad wheel down a road. The road is covered with ashes, though there is no explanation as to the origin of the ashes. It rains. The man coughs. The little boy whines. They have bad shoes.
  
  After a couple pages, the man and boy push the same shopping cart with the same bad wheel down the same road. They're hungry. It rains some more. The think they see someone else on the road. They see a house. They build a fire in a ditch. They wrap their feet in cloth. They pass through a town. There are lots of ashes.
  
  After a couple pages the man and boy have trouble pushing the shopping cart with the bad wheel down the road. It's cold and wet. They avoid someone. They wrap their feet in coats. They see a house and find something disgusting to eat. It snows. There are ashes everywhere.
  
  A ragtag army comes up behind the man and the boy pushing the shopping cart with the bad wheel down the road. They get off the road. They kill a man. They run away. The man thinks he knows where they are on the map. They wrap their feet in a plastic tarp. They return for the shopping cart with the bad wheel and push it down the road in the rain. Not so many ashes, but they will be back. They build a fire in the woods.
  
  They build a fire in a fireplace in an empty house. The man tries to fix the wheel on the shopping cart so he and the boy can push it down the road more easily. It works better for a couple pages. They build a fire under a bridge. The man isn't sure where they are on the map. They are hungry but refuse to kill and eat anyone, though that's what everyone else seems to be doing. The rain and ashes are back.
  
  The man finds a trove that would last months, maybe years. They don't have to build a fire because they have a stove. The man has no idea where they are on the map. The little boy fails to close the gas valve properly. They don't build a fire beside the road. They load their shopping cart with the wheel that's gone bad again and leave everything behind them that they can't carry and push the shopping cart down the road. They have bathed. They have new shoes. It's raining. They are ash deep in the remains of a fire.
  
  The wheel gets worse as the man and boy push the shopping cart down the road. The man coughs. They build a fire in the road. The man knows where they are on the map. They avoid some people they see. They avoid some people who aren't there. The boy whines. They meet and feed someone on the road who says his name's not Ely. They continue down the road.
  
  They go through some towns. They see some houses. They push the shopping cart. They get a wheelbarrow. It rains. The earth quakes. Lightning flashes. They build a fire under a bridge again. The ashes make things tougher. Did I mention their shoes? Their shoes are worn out by the ashes and the rain and the snow and pushing the shopping cart down the road. They wrap their feet in layer upon layer of whatever the author can think of. The man isn't sure where they are on the map. The shopping cart has a bad wheel.
  
  They reach the ocean. The man ransacks a beached sailing ship. He coughs. The boy loses their pistol. They find the pistol. It's dark. It rains. The ocean isn't blue. There are ashes as far as the eye can see. Someone tries to rob them. The man forces the robber to strip naked and they leave him. The boy whines. They return to succor the naked thief. He's not there. The boy whines again.
  
  The man coughs and dies. Another man shows up. The boy goes with the other man.
  
  Now you don't have to suffer through 241 pages of rain, ashes and pushing a shopping cart with a bad wheel down some stupid road.
  
  You're welcome.
  
  
  What I thought: Gryke. Discalced. Mastic. Meconium. Rachitic. Siwash. Parsible. Woad. Kerf. Chary. Firedrake. Palimpsest. Middens. Pampooties. Salitter. Dolmen stones. Crozzled.
  
  I read a fair amount. I have pretty good reading, writing and speaking vocabularies. The above words are in The Road. Two of them I could not find even in the OED. The ones I could look up mostly had mundane meanings. I like books that stretch my vocabulary, but not books that stretch my vocabulary to no end. Why is "chary" better than "wary," which is what chary means. Why is "gryke" better than its preferred spelling grike and why return to the 18th century to tell me there was a crevasse in the limestone cliff. I don't find stumbling over unnecessary obscure words conducive to my reading pleasure, nor am I impressed by big words.
  
  I understand that The Road has been favorably compared to Stephen King's "The Stand." "The Stand," in one of its editions, is more than 1300 pages long. It's a brilliant book. "The Road" couldn't hold "The Stand's" jock. That being said, "The Stand" is not the best end-of-the-world book. King got his idea from George Stewart's masterpiece, "Earth Abides."
  
  "Earth Abides" is the quintessential end-of-the-world book. It reflects reality. It is a great story, It invites the reader to think. In its most recent edition it is 368 pages.
  
  If you are looking for the best in post apocalyptic literature, no one will ever be able to top "Earth Abides!" (This message brought to you by Post, the official Cereal of the Apocalypse!)
  
  If you are looking for a book with little punctuation, no attributions, no chapters, etc. stick with "The Road" If you want to read a real book, read just about anything else. Maybe if enough people buy "The Road," McCarthy can buy a typewriter that has a working comma key, apostrophe key, quotation marks, etc. That's not enough of an incentive for you to spend any amount of money on this book. I am ashamed to have to tell my wife I paid money for it.
  
  This is worse than a bad book.
  
  Your mileage may vary.
  
  There was one noteworthy moment in "The Road. On page 145 an old man notes, "Where man can't live, gods fare no better." You just dodged another bullet. I told you the story above. You know the one vaguely insightful line. Don't send me any money, but next time you're in a book store and you see someone considering this book, warn them. That will be thanks enough.
  
  
• Not a masterpiece...not much of anything
  By A3JFDFQ1TGM894 on 2007-03-15
  If you're reading this, you know the premise of the book and that many reviewers have given it high marks. I fell for the hype but I hope you won't. 'The Road' is like one of those abstract paintings that some people see as incredibly brilliant while the rest of us think it looks like a five-year-old got loose with mom's oil paints. Who doesn't get it - me or them? Who knows, but I'm pretty openminded in trying to appreciate good writing and my advice is not to waste your time or money on this book. If an unknown writer submitted work like this, publishing house editors would be laughing about it over lunch.
  
  
• Would highhy NOT recommend
  By A1O6GELQTGYJQG on 2007-06-17
  I know I'm in the minority here, but I really didn't like this book. I knew I was in trouble just by the first 2 sentences. The language should draw you in and move you though the story but McCarthy's unconventional sentence butchering, and flat dialog really falls flat. Even this may be stomachable if it weren't for the fact that the whole thing is just too bleak and lacking in substance. There is barely enough here for a short story. Why this is getting so much acclaim is beyond me. It seems as though people are willing to forgive too much in this book just because it is highly acclaimed and Oprah put it on her list. I think this is definitely a case of the emperor having no clothes on.
  
  
• Get over yourself.
  By A1ED9BGBSY2DF9 on 2007-04-29
  Okay, even when the meteor that killed the dinosaurs struck the planet, *some* things survived, but not in this book. Just a few lonely, and terminally hungry, humans and a couple of mushrooms. I do not discount the scientific evidence for nuclear winter, but come on. Among other things, his book has the standard cliche of the post-apocalypse novel: cannibals. Anyone who's read any Science Fiction has already become tired of this theme. Since we've all heard of the Donner Party and a certain plane crash in the Andes, we all know that, in the event of extreme starvation, people will eat each other. It's just not that shocking anymore. Not to mention the fact that, in this book, I find McCarthy's writing completely pretentious and full of itself. For example, he doesn't use apostrophes in his contractions and skips commas. Also, in this lifeless, dead world were supposed to think "Wow, these two individuals and the 'good guys' they finally meet are 'carrying the fire' for humanity!" In a world as dead as the one McCarthy portrays here, I found it impossible to believe that there's any fire left to be carried. All in all, an obvious attempt at a message novel that left me impatient, annoyed and feeling that I had wasted my time by reading it.
  
  
• "This is the way the world ends...."
  By A3CE57YNGVWBQN on 2007-03-31
  In a barren, ashen landscape that was once the United States of America, a weary man and his young son are traveling south in search of the ocean. They scavenge for food and shelter, and they must constantly avoid marauding bands of fellow survivors who would prey on them. The one thing that sustains them on their way is their ferocious love for each other. THE ROAD is the story of their heartbreaking journey.
  
  Every now and then, when we need reminding, a great writer shows us one possible future for our species if we continue on the path to self-destruction. In 1957, Nevil Shute gave us ON THE BEACH, and now, 50 years later, Cormac McCarthy has given us an eloquent new version of the same cautionary tale. We didn't listen then. Perhaps we can learn something now.
  
  I have rarely been so moved by a work of literature. To call this the most important novel of 2006 is an understatement. Read it and weep. Read it and be uplifted. Just read it--before it's too late.
  
  
  
• Woe Is Me
  By A2P13Q5SW0HLHU on 2007-11-10
  Pity me. I am so unintelligent, uneducated, unappreciative of fine art, etc, etc, that I cannot enjoy Cormac McCarthy. Reviewers assure me that he is a great literary voice in our time, but I cannot stomach his writing.
  
  First there was All the Pretty Horses. I tried and tried and tried to enjoy it, appreciate it, accept its majesty, but I failed. I read about how Blood Meridian was one of the top five novels of the last 25 years. So, when I came to the Road, I wanted and wanted and wanted this to be the book that broke me to McCarthy and finally left me awestruck in the presence, the sheer majesty, of his genius.
  
  Alas, dear reader, I have failed. Here I find a lukewarm plot (done better by scores of science fiction writers whose attempts were, gasp, far more literary than this), shallow characters, and little reason to keep reading. In fact, I didn't. His prose is all sentence fragments, poor diction, forced metaphors, etc. Why do I continue to expect good writing from writers?
  
  Please, buy this book immediately and prove me wrong. Tell me what a woeful philistine I must be not to appreciate such obvious talent. Pray that you will never be afflicted by this horrible curse that leaves me expecting enjoyment from reading, craft in literature, and truth in art.
  
  
• Absolutely Terrible!!
  By A1K2GOBQUH7NS8 on 2007-04-25
  Don't buy off on the good reviews for this book. I wish I could get my money back. One of the most boring stories you will ever read. The main character responds to his kids concerns with, "I know" This occurs about fifty times in the book. I was ready to throw it in the trash if I read one more "I know" response. So the planet is destroyed and all the guy can say to his kid is I know?? Kid says, "I'm scared" dad says, "I know" Kid says "I'm hungry" dad says, "I know". What the hell? In addition, one moment they are deep in the woods, the next they are in a residental neighborhood, or pilfering through a supermarket. Then back to the woods.This goes on and on and on. Trust me, don't get hypnotized by the Oprah sticker on the front. But another book!
  
  
• 'What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.'
  By A328S9RN3U5M68 on 2006-11-12
  Cormac McCarthy has a way with words. His sentences are fragments, his punctuation is minimal. His placement of conversation on a page is as spare as the feelings that initiate it and it is offered without character identification or quotation marks. He has a gift for making landscapes visual, for describing events in the most succinct way that it is only after passing over a paragraph that the thunder strikes. Cormac McCarthy is a powerful writer.
  
  THE ROAD is a bleak novel, one that after a few pages becomes frightening, challenging, and so ugly that the reader is tempted to stop the journey. But proceeding on with reading this work places the persistent reader in a trance-like state, wondering how such a tale will resolve. And in so many ways it doesn't end, leaving us with only inward uneasy feelings that this apocalyptic story may be all too near.
  
  A man and his son walk through the 241 pages of this novel in a world gone wrong. Though we are never told the etiology of the destruction of the planet's surface by fire (this is McCarthy we are reading!), there is nothing left but burnt houses, corpses, barren trees, and ash - ash that penetrates everything including the lungs of our two characters but also the sea, the sky, the ground, the air, and the mood. The 'story' is the struggle to keep walking the face of the earth, always headed south where it sill be warmer, searching for means of survival. The man and his son grow even more strong as there physical stamina collapses and the degree of love and acceptance of the way things are bonds them inextricably. They occasionally encounter other live humans ('good guys' or 'bad guys') who represent challenges for the meager food supply for sustenance. As with all of McCarthy's novels we learn much about these two characters by the end of the story, not so much from shared history as just existential survival. 'Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.'
  
  For some the novel may be just too dark to read and that is certainly understandable given the various cycles of life in which we all travel. But the ultimate result of finishing McCarthy's view of the end of the world has a strangely odd sense of hope. That is part of the author's ability to create a work that will be lasting. For this reader THE ROAD is jarringly indelible. Grady Harp, November 06
  
  
• A Road Trip Through Hell
  By AV88U381NT5N2 on 2007-03-28
  
  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
  
  
  
• Ashes to ashes...
  By AON0G88NAKKQI on 2006-10-15
  "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy appeared as welcome art on the top shelf of our town's lone bookstore. Over years, eleven of Mr. McCarthy's works have enticed my imagination into realms brilliantly conceived. His use of language and format was refreshing and stimulating. While no smiles passed the lips of any of his characters in all those works, Mr. McCarthy's art meandered along the reality of the darker streams of life, some placed here in the western lands where I was born and live. That drew me in, but his magnificent use of our language kept me.
  
  The theme of "The Road" is a long lived nightmare of those of us now in our mid fifty's --"Duck and cover" was commonly practiced in my grade school here in Wyoming and even we as small children knew it would be hopeless, that vaporization would take us or at the very least we would be extinguished by being burnt to a crisp by ion fire. We wrote about it too. I even watched from a mountaintop one of the great mushroom clouds as it was being made in Nevada. Watched as it drifted into our watershed, upon our snow and into our water. Fear on many levels permeated our early years and flowed into adulthood. We see so much in the exposed West. Now the real worry is Yellowstone, as super volcano, that it will vaporize us then cover our precious civilization with ash...
  
  Around me, there has always been hope and light and smiles, but Mr. McCarthy has not seen or at least incorporated that into his work, and that was not important to me or relative. Now comes "The Road".
  
  I wish I had not bought the book. I wish I had not read it. At the end of reading it in one sitting I wanted to burn it and let its ashes blow across Wyoming. I love reading and I love having books. I would never have imagined I could feel this way. At first I was saddened that the choice of clever sentence use and misuse, was far less than in other works. Some sentences seem as out of place as a poorly cut board in the trim of my home and as troubling. I felt sadness not about the topic, but about the construction. This time, in this work, there seem true faults not clever mind enticing creations.
  
  Anyone who knows me has experienced my passion for Cormac McCarthy's art. It is hard not to personalize the worry for the health and direction of the author when clarity is made real only through the reader's own fiction.
  
  
• No plot; no character development; no theme conflicts; no point!
  By A1JWYDG4CRN1FX on 2007-11-23
  First, after reading all these reviews, I would like to say that the idea that this is "Great writing that makes reading easy and quick" is just wrong. There is no punctuation really and incomplete sentences which makes the reading very choppy and hard to flow into. People think what makes this novel a "quick" read is that the book was 280 or so pages, but the Font size was jacked up along with huge spaces between the lines of text. Not to mention the 3 or 4 lines that are skipped continuously within every page in between conversation, paragraphs, or new events.
  
  Second, I don't need plot. I don't need action. Hell, I don't even need a complete explanation of what happened to the world. I wasn't expecting any of these. What I was thinking I was going to get was a story with characters that we knew and could know something about. The problem is that we learned nothing about them. Who was the dad? What did he use to do before the world? How did he even meet his wife? What about the son? Who knows? Who cares? That is the last question you'll be asking yourself.
  
  With no Character development, there had to be some plot. But the thing is there wasn't any. They just walked endlessly. It was tedious. But they didn't have anything new to do. Walk, set up camp, find food, wake up, walk. No discussion of any feelings or opinions or any insight to what this man was thinking about any of these situations.
  
  There were some themes to play around with here, but guess what? Without a plot, then without character development, the conflict that exists is obviously going to be nil. There was no chance to really show off any themes or commentary on them.
  
  After all this, I have to say this book is worthless. It was an empty read. I took nothing away, I didn't get any enjoyment out of it, I didn't EVEN get sadness or depression or being upset. The most that happened was me being disappointed, but that isn't something I like after reading a book, definitely when it is about the book itself.
  
  
  
• Interesting Read, But the storytelling with its loose plots lacks style.
  By AINF5Q1BR7E6O on 2007-04-02
  There have been many reviews on this book, but I'll add my brief thoughts as to what my impression is of this literary work.
  
  The novel takes you on a trip with a man and his son, traveling along a very barren road that goes nowhere in a world that has disappeared. They are starving, tired, but also determined to follow that road no matter what may happen to them. Their desire is to find a better environment. Any reasonable existing of life form would be better than what surrounds them at this time in their journey.
  
  There wasn't much beauty in their barren Holocaustic world that is laden with tons of ash and grim dust. The author tried to weave some beauty in this world, but I didn't get any warm and fuzzy feelings from the author's attempt that there was any beauty in their world . What could be beautiful when there is nothing left in the world except you and your son, and some small colonies of other humans that have survived? Very depressing.
  
  I was surprised to find that this author's style of writing was so cumbersome with the constant use of choppy sentences and poor punctuation, lack of quotes etc., that it makes for an even more disappointing read.
  
  I'm glad my friend gave me the book to read. It was interesting, I wouldn't recommend it to my friends. There are number of well known authors and lesser known authors that can provide a reader with an educational, exciting and well-written novel, but this gloom and doom book with its one-dimensional characters, loose plots and erratic themes is not one them.
  
  
  
  
• "Are We Still The Good Guys?"
  By A1TPW86OHXTXFC on 2006-10-14
  'Concurrent with keeping his son alive is the more metaphysical challenge of sustaining his son's innate goodness while forcing him to witness the corruption of all moral behavior. "Are we still the good guys?" the boy asks in moments of confusion and shock. His father insists they are. "This is what good guys do," he tells him. "They keep trying. They don't give up." Why, then, his son asks, won't he help the stragglers they run across instead of running from them or shooting at them? "We should go to him, Papa. We could get him and take him with us. . . . I'd give that little boy half of my food." How to explain the necessity of abandoning others to certain death (or worse, in one particularly terrifying scene) while maintaining that they're "the good guys," the ones "carrying the fire"? Washington Post
  
  Cormac Mccarthy has given us a glimpse of a world none of us want to see or visit, but we are there. It is desolate, singulatory, stark, bleak; all of these words and more are needed to describe a world after a nuclear explosion. We are left to imagine the events, the place, and the time. All we have are these two souls, dad and son, no names. They are moving from one place to another to get to the coast, why, we do not know, are left to wonder. Along the way Mccarthy describes the world we never want to see. Smoldering even after a few years, everything black and stripped of any semblance. Not many people, and those they meet, they are afraid of. Looters, and murderers and eaters of flesh. These two souls, father and son, the two evidences that love can keep you going, can keep you on the right path, and can keep you "One of the good guys". There is not much to keep you going or to keep you safe. Death, no food, no shelter, no clothing, harsh and cold environment, only your wits, and then it is hard to keep them together. A harsh and cold path and if it is what we have to face, Cormac Mccarthy has given us the most beautiful prose and surreal writing.
  
  This is a book to be read by everyone. This is a book to be remembered, to be revered and to be kept in the recesses of our brains, to come out only when necessary. This book begs to be discussed. So many nuances, so many allegories, and so many scenes that are reminiscent, but still new.
  
  "He knew only that the child was his warrant," it says of the father and his mission. "He said: if he is not the word of God, God never spoke." The love of a father and his son, the greatest love of all.
  Highly, highly recommended. prisrob 10-14-06
  
  
  
• Horribly depressing...
  By A2HY89KGLQ73X5 on 2007-05-01
  I bought and read this book based on a review I read here. The review I read made the book sound very compelling. It was. But I think I was let down because with every turn of the page I think I looked for hope that didn't exist for the characters. This book most definitely left a lasting impression, but not a good one. It is dark and disturbing. I would not recommend it unless you like very dark and apocalyptic writings.
  
  
  
  
• This Book Even Smells Bad
  By AR6ANCRQJUAUI on 2008-01-06
  I just started reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy and if I didn't know better I would say that it was written by a 10th grader who has done too much glue.
  
  The second sentence of the book threw me - "Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before." I guess it is a sentence but certainly not a good one.
  
  The third sentence of the book was yuck - "Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world."
  
  After several more pages of continuous tripe and linguistic debauchery I googed the reviews for "The Road". I was dumbfounded to discern that McCarthy is the winner of a myriad of Writer Awards and is considered by some to be one of Americas best authors with some even comparing him to Melville.
  
  Perhaps I would have enjoyed "The Road" more if it was written in some language that I am not familiar with.
  
  My challenge to anyone who considers "The Road" anything other than the worst example of literature ever to quote some passage that they deem of merit.
  
  I agree 1000% with the comment made by another reviewer - "'The Road' is like one of those abstract paintings that some people see as incredibly brilliant while the rest of us think it looks like a five-year-old got loose with mom's oil paints."
  
  
• what is the message???
  By A2V3EYEMA3CF11 on 2007-05-06
  I dont know why so many people liked this book. The author left much to the imagination (names of characters, what happened to the world that left the boy and man in this desperate situation. There is very litte dialogue and while we understood that the father had intense love for his son, the author left it to our imagination to find out why. There wasn't enough dialogue, so we never really knew the characters.
  
  There are only so many paragraphs I could read that described the conditions around them, much of which had nothing to do with the story. I started to say to myself "OK...I get it already....the world is desolate", now move on and develop the story. I dont know why there are so many popular reviews. Im fine with a depressing story, if I care about the characters, but in "The Road" I couldnt care less.
  
  
• Samuel Beckett shops at Walmart.
  By A361LE16VBQDP8 on 2006-11-14
  Is it possible that Cormac McCarthy is pulling our collective leg? His nameless duo are pushing a shopping trolley (a shopping trolley!) through hell. In a way, this might be construed as funny. Funny or not, it is very hard to take literally, that is as a serious envisioning of a post-apocalyptic landscape. That admitted, how is one to understand this tale? It could be a blackly comedic rendering of the mental state of the modern consumer; a consumer not only of material goods, but of myths.
  *
  You can't get much more cliched a metaphor than a road. McCarthy takes the metaphor and literalizes it horrifically, to the edge of humour. Samuel Beckett would do the same to a cliched phrase; what's more, the very scenarios of some of his later work bear a glancing resemblance to that of 'The Road' - 'Ill Seen Ill Said', 'Company', and 'Worstward Ho' have old men and children - thus the last mentioned work has:
  
  "Bit by bit an old man and child. In the dim void bit by bit an old man and child. Any other would do as ill.
  
  Hand in hand with equal plod they go. In the free hands-no. Free empty hands. Backs turned both bowed with equal plod they go..."
  
  As you can see, even the lighting effects are similarly grey and dim. The parallels with Beckett only emphasize the abstract nature of McCarthy's text. The road taken as a life, leading to a warmer clime, with an ocean view, is (possibly) speaking of an attitude, a kind of naively faithful hedonism, a myth that tempts many of us, and which McCarthy caustically ridicules.
  *
  A related sacrosanct attitude is that of the child as an unanalysed seed of hope. 'The Road' has the father superficially attributing his own fractured compulsion to remain moral to the presence of his son - yet in the world of 'The Road' there is no future, and there is no advantage in deferring consequence and responsibility onto the next generation - there will be no next generation - so the father's inclinations are reduced to evasions, where he excuses his own weakness and evil by invoking the, in this case starkly illusory, promise of the future as embodied by his son. McCarthy might be saying that all this adoration of the child might amount to mere procrastination. We better do something about ourselves, before we...er...expire sidewise in a ragged haemoptysis, or whatever.
  *
  Going back to the shopping trolley: our dynamic duo get excited by cans of pears, and cans of pork and beans, which they wheel along the molten, firestorm swept highways, trying to dodge both the limbs of charred trees and the distorted corpses of those boiled and partly swallowed by the road...along with their beans, I think they have been fed a diet of the Book of Revelations, and Greek mythology, and Hell as envisioned by Dante and Milton, and possibly a few films by George Romero. There is something faintly ludicrous about their predicament and their delights. It is the epitome of a world that is utterly centred on the human - how can it not be? Everything else is dead! They wheel their little cargo of goods, bent on their own survival, and heedless of much else - the dream of complete isolation is near upon them, if only they can avoid the few others sharing the dream. Heaven is found in the form a survivalist's bunker crammed full of consumables; and the idea of cannibalism is the one trope to be resisted - although, given their unflinching faith in survival, it too is tempting. And, to defend their right to an isolated aimless existence, they carry a gun. Are we meant to laugh? Is this Go Go and Di Di wandering down the aisles in a Walmart, ready to defend their bounty with their last two silver bullets?
  *
  Does all of this go beyond Hobbesian nightmare and become farce? I'm not sure. Perhaps McCarthy is asking us to face up honestly to our mortality and shed our delusions, both those falsely optimistic and those falsely combative and Darwinian. On the other hand, perhaps all the above discussion is illegitimate - is 'The Road' just a warning, McCarthy's imagining of our potential future given his worldview which sees evil incarnate upon earth and the likely winner of any battle? If this is all the book accomplishes, I think it is a rather stupid book. It captivates in much the way other survival tales might, be these the story of cannibalism by air crash survivors on a mountaintop, or Jack London's brutal canine stories for adolescents - so you can read this happily in a few hours, the pages almost empty (in more ways than one) when recounting dialogue.
  *
  Given McCarthy's grand successes in 'Suttree' and 'Blood Meridian', I hope there's some irony inherent in 'The Road'. Having wished that, I can't say that the writing is on a level with those earlier works; as an attempt to pare down his style, I think it is an artistic failure. Unlike the later Beckett, which succeeds on its own terms, McCarthy's prose is like a broken parody of its former strength. His arcane vocabulary appears, but without motivation - this is a world in no need of the specificity demanded by words such as 'loess' and 'gryke'. The dialogue is not so much poetic as dull. The word 'okay' offers little window into any type of soul, and here it is called into service all too frequently. In fact, it might be accurate to sum up my impression of the book by invoking that very word.
  
  
  
• simply 5 stars
  By A1OYSMK7TYDTH4 on 2006-09-28
  In 1982, as a lark, to keep me away from bad habits, I undertook reading and/or rereading everything William Faulkner had written. Having had an excellent professor in college who had guided me through a half dozen of the books I prepared myself with a brand new paperback dictionary. I used it often and after 6 months it was in pieces and I could say I read all of Faulkner for fun. When I was finished I lamented there was no more Faulkner to read.
  
  Then in the early '90's someone steered me to McCarthy. I read "..Pretty Horses..." first and then moved through the early catalog dictionary in hand. I had a blast. I was reading an author who loved words and created images that emotively seemed similar to Faulkner. Once Faulkner called himself a failed poet as he used too many words to describe a thing. As McCarthy's body of work has grown so as his efficient writing style. "No Country..." hit me like few other books and I did something I hadn't done since childhood. After reading it I turned around and read it again, twice. Since then I've read it two more times.
  
  Now "The Road"" arrives and with images that have been seared into my skull as I read the book in a single sitting.As a father of a young son I was moved by the devotion of the man to the boy. What do you tell someone who knows only what is? Several earlier reviews mention wishing to know what caused the world to be in the shape that it is. I think we aren't informed because knowing that would not change the world as it is for the man and boy. In "No Country..." several key scenes that would have most probably been filled with action and blood were left not described for the same reason I think. The reality of the world that is now would not be changed by the knowing.
  
  I am reminded of a quote from Bishop Butler. "All things are, what they are, and not another thing."
  
  Cormac McCarthy has written a book about a man and a boy in a world we can neither honestly imagine or explain. It is a story of profound love and a perverted hope of victory for the "good guys." I cannot escape the images that are now absorbed into my thinking and reality. You should buy and read this book.
  
  "The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon."
  
  
• Cold, wet, & hungry...Cold, wet, & hungry...Cold, etc.
  By A39J5ANOQ2TNZN on 2007-06-04
  Highly acclaimed as a literary masterpiece addressing postapocalyptic human relations "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy is likely to disappoint many readers. This 287 page document is considered by many to be an easy read in that the limited vocabulary is used amidst both the simplistic dialogue and narrative. McCarthy has done a nice job in establishing operations that create an environment in which the reader stays with the book in anticipation of something other than a belabored and redundant description of a cold, ashy environment.
  
  Potential limitations of text include poor and inconsistent use of punctuation, absence of meaningful character development, predictable situation outcomes, and immature dialogue. An example follows.
  
  So when are you going to talk to me again?
  I'm talking now.
  Are you sure?
  Yes.
  Ok.
  Ok.
  
  "The Road" initially, and still, reminded/reminds me of an expanded written version of the 10:00 news. Doom, gloom, sorry, and tragedy are the regular occupants. Critics of this review are correct in arguing that such is likely to be the scenario in a postapocalypic environment. However, for myself, the book lacks redeeming quality. Yes it is sad, tragic, and regretful. It is also possible that we may be subjected to nuclear war or an unparalleled nature disaster as described in this manuscript. The problem is that the book gives you nothing but sorrow. The alleged saving grace at story's end is anticlimactic and comes across as though written as an afterthought.
  
  In summary, if you wish to spend a few hours of your finite life thinking only about how bleak and unbearable the world could be in a worst case scenario then you truly will enjoy reading about starvation and cannibalism in "The Road". For those who wish to focus on positive attributes of the human species, other books are recommended. If this review is accurate, one will inquire as to the overwhelming ratio of 5 stars (best) to 1 star ratings (worst). One hypothesis is that the "Opera propaganda machine" has pledged support for the book which significantly impacts sales and favorable ratings. Why would rating be increased? The abridged answer lies in vicarious living/association through/with individuals (Opera) in a higher social class. By agreeing with a tv star of seemingly unequal status, one may subconsciously feel an increase in personal esteem and/or worth. The second potential cause for the high favorable rating ratio is likely to be the underreporting of low scores. Image spending hours reading the most depressing document of your life. How likely are you to take even more time from your day and/or family to detail why the melancholic book is not recommended. The regret of "wasting" so much time reading "The Road" will seldom be compounded by continuing to entertain thoughts of its bleakness.
  
  
  
• Trying to understand what others find so compelling about this book
  By A1TMNT07S01B4R on 2007-06-28
  There are many reasons one might be tempted to buy a book that has been as highly touted as this, and from so many sources. Admittedly, I approached the work from the "science fiction"/post-apocalyptic aspect. This was an immediate mistake on my part, as the actual setting for the novel is mentioned only in passing strokes. We never really have any perspective for how our father and son duo have landed themselves in this predicament. The only real picture we are painted is of a lifeless, ashen world. Quite frankly, our setting is boring. Quickly too, does the main characters' dialog tax the nerves. I have heard others describe Mr. McCarthy's style as succinct, sparse, and polished to perfection. This description is kind beyond measure. The pace of this book is plodding, boring, excruciating. There is no foreseeable richness to the stripped, minimalist conversations the father and son have. Ultimately, this book was a struggle to finish, even at its modest page count.
  
  Please understand that I am not condemning all of Mr. McCarthy's work. This book was my unfortunate first step into the fictions of this well respected author. I am eager to try some of his other works, hopefully with better results.
  
  
• Monotonous, dismal hopelessness with a hollow resolution.
  By A3EWGQ1VHQ3VAU on 2007-02-26
  I am utterly baffled at the bulk of good reviews of this book. It was dismal and depressing - a series of mostly unrelated episodes of hopelessness, followed by a predictable ending with little "warmth" as some reviews seem to have suggested. Indeed, those reviews were why I bought and read the book, and I was disappointed.
  
  The tempo of the book is monotonous, with no central conflict beyond that of surviving - and that conflict was there at the beginning, there at the end, and never really resolved. There were brief moments of elevated danger, but each was resolved quickly, predictably, and without any particular plot complexity.
  
  The writer used much artistic license, with many sentences not being grammatically correct. It felt like reading an entire book written like a 1960's angst poem. The author uses a technique whereby conversations are repetitive, long, stilted, and occupy one like per statement, which seems to have been designed to burn pages. To wit (my example):
  
  I'm going to the store.
  To the store.
  Yes.
  Why?
  Why?
  Yeah.
  To get some milk.
  Milk.
  Yeah.
  
  I reached the end of the book thinking, "That's it?" And the only reason I finished it was the reviews that called the ending "heartwarming" and the fact that it was less than three hundred pages ("...might as well finish it," I thought.)
  
  To be fair, I don't know how one would write a better book about a doomed father and son wandering through a landscape of nuclear winter, cannibals and corpses, where there is nothing to live for but the next can of peaches (okay, and to "carry the fire"), but then, maybe this is not a topic you really want to explore. If you really have a desire to experience this pointless despair, then perhaps this book is for you. But otherwise, skip it.
  
  
• HATED IT!
  By A27UY5ZSTLYZIY on 2007-06-05
  I read this book on vacation and hated every page of it. I found it to be extremely boring, dark, and unsatisfying. I appreciate the talent of the author, but this just wasn't my cup of tea.
  
  

• The Sunset Limited
• Child of God
• Outer Dark
• The Orchard Keeper
• Suttree