Depressing, but good

books:


	• The Road (Oprah's Book Club) Cormac McCarthy Vintage Books, 2007 - 287 pages average customer review:based on 1559 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Depressing, but good

No technology, no living animals except man (and much of mankind is little more than animals), no living plants, the world in the midst of a prolonged winter. It's depressing to think the world could come to this. The book still sends chills down my spine weeks later.

Remarkable

I was stunned by the beauty and horror combined in this book. Utterly engrossing, I couldn't put it down.

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The Road Taken

Here's what "The Road" is not. It's not science fiction. The story is set in a post-apocalyptic America but it doesn't bother to go into any detail about what happened. It's not an adventure story. Our protagonists don't fall into the hands of an evil army and forge a daring escape. It's not a traditional story. If you're looking for a three act arc with beginning, middle and end it's not here. You get a beginning and maybe an end, that's it. So what is it? To me it's about us; as a race, as individuals. Ask you're self what would happen if the world changed tomorrow? Changed in such a way that everything we know, our cars, our food, our friends, our sky were all gone. How would you adapt? How would you survive?

In McCarthy's "The Road" we follow a man and his son down a road as they move east towards the sea, their world reduced to themselves and a shopping cart which they push slowly forward. Through their eyes we see the planet as it has become, a forever gray sky, humans reduced to cattle, giant fires that sweep across the land. The writing, the dialogue, even the punctuation is minimum. Often it felt repetitious and too simplistic, but I was still drawn to their struggle. After some time reading, I knew I wasn't going to get a predictable "Hollywood" story. Rather, I was just going to get their story; a story that anyone of us might face some day, utterly lacking in adventure, predictability, and even dialogue but a story that reeks of paranoia, fear, and uncertainty.

Is "The Road" a classic? I don't know if that's for us to decide, but it's a perfect read for those in high school and on up. So maybe some 12th grade Lit. Class will debate the "classic" question, because people seem to be debating it now. And the fact that they're debating now tells me that McCarthy doing something right.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

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