Hope in the Bleakest of Worlds

books:


	• The Road (Oprah's Book Club) Cormac McCarthy Vintage Books, 2007 - 287 pages average customer review:based on 1415 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Doomsday Classic

A man and his son travel through a dead America after what we assume to be a nuclear holocaust. This is a world of melted cities and a world full of dead lakes, oceans, and forests populated only by outlaws and thieves. Nothing grows anymore and the cities and towns are graveyards. For all of it's desolation and pessimism about the future of mankind, the relationship between the father and his son is touching and ultimately offers some hope.
Masterfully written. It's a cliche, but I couldn't put this book down.

Hope in the Bleakest of Worlds

Cormac McCarthy's latest novel, The Road, is a 'road trip' novel that takes the reader quite literally through hell. McCarthy's setting--a post-apocalyptic earth where snow falls in gray flurries and the landscape is drained of all color--is so eloquently described that I was forced to check the window now and again to make sure the sun was still there. The challenge of writing a story like this is to create an underlying theme of hope. McCarthy more than rises to the occasion by giving us characters--a nameless father and his young son--who transcend the hopeless setting and give readers someone and something to root for. Told with a starkness of style that matches the world he creates, McCarthy renders every sentence a tragic tale in itself. Along the way, we are reminded that, like the doomed father and son, each of us is on a hopeless journey, one that will ultimately end in death. Yet through it all, we have one gift. Love. And with that gift, the journey--no matter how painful--is worth taking. Salmon Run

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A Layered Grey Snow Story.

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.

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The epic journey

The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a powerful and heart-retching novel that will keep all readers thirsting for more. This epic novel describes the troublesome journey of two boys, a father and his son, as they travel a road south in order to survive in a desolate waste land. Distressed by hungry cannibals these two men go to hell and back in order to live for what they believe in and to ultimately survive. Through characterization within the book as well as the author's writing style, this novel creates a piece of work that illustrates the importance of never giving up and to always prevail when times are rough.
Throughout this novel there was countless times where the father and his son stared death in the face. I loved this book so much because it showed the results of dedication. There are a few instances in the novel where these two men almost starved to death. However, the father's will to stay alive and to keep his son alive was unbreakable. There were times when he would leave his son to look for food and would come back with additional supplies in order to keep them going. Also, the father's will to protect his son from danger was infallible as well. Despite the fact that there were several times where the father persuaded his son to kill himself if there was a risk of him being captured, this man's dedication never deceased. Additional actions such as killing another man who endangered their survival are just other examples that show the dedication of these two men. This characterization depicts a very important lesson to all who read this book, saying that one should never give up in the midst of hardships.
In my opinion, the only negative aspect of the book was the ending. Even though the son finds a new family, personally, I would have enjoyed it better if the father had survived as well. Nevertheless, this book was a very powerful book and I recommend it to any high school students who like reading books with action, suspense, and a good plot overall.

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THE ROAD... that could be.

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, keeps you interested it what is down the road, why and how.
The only distracting thing about the book was there was not an apostrophe in words (dont, couldnt, etc.). It WAS distracting but, when used to it, it did not change what was happening in the story.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER
National Book Critic's Circle Award Finalist

A New York Times Notable Book
One of the Best Books of the Year
The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times, New York, People, Rocky Mountain News, Time, The Village Voice, The Washington Post

The searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-?and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.

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