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The Road by Cormac McCarthy
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The Road (original 2006; edition 2006)

by Cormac McCarthy (Author)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
27,715127270 (4.07)1 / 1406
America is a barren landscape of smoldering ashes, devoid of life except for those people still struggling to scratch out some type of existence. Amidst the destruction, a father and his young son walk, always toward the coast, but with no real understanding that circumstances will improve once they arrive. Still they persevere, and their relationship comes to represent goodness in a world that is utterly devastated.… (more)
▾Book information
Member:sullijo
Title:The Road
Authors:Cormac McCarthy (Author)
Info:Alfred A. Knopf (2006), Edition: 1st, 241 pages
Collections:Your library, To read
Rating:
Tags:@ordered, fiction, science fiction, dystopia

Work details

The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)

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Ordered 2019-11-29
▾LibraryThing Recommendations
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▾Member recommendations
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    Earth Abides by George R. Stewart (psybre)
    psybre: Earth Abides, a classic post-apocalyptic novel published in 1949, is a bit less dark, and as an ecological fable, contains more science than The Road. When pondering to read The Road again, read this book instead.
  14. 51
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  15. 73
    The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (hazzabamboo)
    hazzabamboo: Two post-apocalyptic masterpieces, with much of their power coming from their focus on a couple of characters and the exotic horrors that threaten them.
  16. 30
    I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (Tanglewood, tottman)
    tottman: Both are dystopian novels with engaging and driven main characters. They are bleak but extraordinarily moving and compelling.
  17. 30
    Rivers by Michael Farris Smith (GCPLreader)
  18. 41
    The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński (Stbalbach)
    Stbalbach: Kosinski & McCarthy were born 5 weeks apart in 1933 and were ages 6-12 during WWII. Both books are dark violent fables told from a child's view.
  19. 31
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  20. 20
    Far North: A Novel by Marcel Theroux (klarusu)
    klarusu: Far North is less harrowing than The Road but equally thought provoking

(see all 43 recommendations)

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English (1,198)  French (20)  Spanish (14)  Dutch (8)  Italian (6)  German (5)  Danish (4)  Swedish (4)  Catalan (3)  Norwegian (2)  Finnish (2)  Czech (1)  Hebrew (1)  Bulgarian (1)  Portuguese (Portugal) (1)  Polish (1)  All languages (1,271)
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Showing 1-5 of 1198 (next | show all)
Very good book about the strength of parent/child bond. ( )
  karenhulseman | Dec 3, 2019 |
Very good book about the strength of parent/child bond. ( )
  karenhulseman | Dec 3, 2019 |
The Road is a 2006 apocalypse novel written by Cormac McCarthy which is recognised as one of his many masterpieces of American literature which garnered him the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007 and James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006. The Road is one of the redeeming novels which revives the soul and heals the reader in ways unimaginable. The novel speaks to the reader and sparks an inevitable and immortal message of hope for peace and restoration passed from generation to generation. Read reviews: https://bit.ly/2mIbInX ( )
  TheSoundsOfSilence | Nov 4, 2019 |
I don't think I've ever read a book that fast. Enthralling and gripping. Bawled my eyes out in the end. ( )
  withlightandlove | Oct 24, 2019 |
A very readable and enjoyable book from a wordsmithing point of view. I recommend it hightly, and although it posits a very depressing and bleak future, I couldnt stop reading it and actually deliberately missed a stop on my train to finish it. But I'm not so sure it deserved the Pulitzer -- in the end it was a very well-written and convincing atmospheric tableau, but there was no major character development or narrative turns (until perhaps the last few pages)... I really think it was more of a tonal poem in post-apocalyptic novel form. & why couldn't they publish this book under Science Fiction? ( )
  jhwhit | Oct 7, 2019 |
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Showing 1-5 of 1198 (next | show all)
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▾Published reviews
But McCarthy’s latest effort, The Road, is a missed opportunity.
added by eereed | editThe New Criterion, Stefan Beck (Oct 3, 2011)
 
With only the corpse of a natural world to grapple with, McCarthy's father and son exist in a realm rarely seen in the ur-masculine literary tradition: the domestic. And from this unlikely vantage McCarthy makes a big, shockingly successful grab at the universal.
added by eereed | editSlate, Jennifer Egan (Oct 10, 2006)
 
“The Road” is a dynamic tale, offered in the often exalted prose that is McCarthy’s signature, but this time in restrained doses — short, vivid sentences, episodes only a few paragraphs or a few lines long, which is yet another departure for him.
added by eereed | editNew York Times Book Review, William Kennedy (Oct 8, 2006)
 
Post-apocalyptic fiction isn't automatically better when written by Cormac McCarthy, but he does have a way of investing genre clichés with fine gray tones and morose poetry.
added by eereed | editA.V. Club, Noel Murray (Oct 5, 2006)
 
But even with its flaws, there's just no getting around it: The Road is a frightening, profound tale that drags us into places we don't want to go, forces us to think about questions we don't want to ask. Readers who sneer at McCarthy's mythic and biblical grandiosity will cringe at the ambition of The Road . At first I kept trying to scoff at it, too, but I was just whistling past the graveyard. Ultimately, my cynicism was overwhelmed by the visceral power of McCarthy's prose and the simple beauty of this hero's love for his son.
added by eereed | editWashington Post, Ron Charles (Oct 1, 2006)
 
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▾Other authors

» Add other authors (15 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
McCarthy, Cormac—primary authorall editionsconfirmed
Hirsch, FrançoisTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Preis, ThomasTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Stechschulte, TomReadersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Testa, MartinaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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▾Common Knowledge
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Series (with order)
Canonical title
Original title
The Road
Alternative titles
Original publication date
2006-10-02
People/Characters
The Man
The Boy
Wells
Loretta
Ely
Important places
USA
Southeastern North America
Important events
Related movies
The Road (2009 ∙ IMDb)
Awards and honors
Pulitzer Prize (2007.1|Fiction, 2007)
James Tait Black Memorial Prize (Fiction, 2006)
National Book Critics Circle Award finalist (2006)
Oprah's Book Club selection (March 28, 2007)
SF Site Editor's Choice (2006)
Epigraph
Dedication
This book is dedicated to
John Francis McCarthy
First words
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him.
Quotations
He'd not have thought the value of the smallest thing predicated on a world to come. It surprised him. That the space which these things occupied was itself an expectation (149).
From daydreams on the road there was no waking. He plodded on. He could remember everything of her save her scent. Seated in a theatre with her beside him leaning forward listening to the music. Gold scrollwork and sconces and the tall columnar folds of the drapes at either side of the stage. She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the tops of her stockings through the thin stuff of her summer dress. Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned.
He pulled the boy closer. Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.

You forget some things, don't you?

Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.
It took two days to cross that ashen scabland. The road beyond fell away on every side. It's snowing, the boy said. He looked at the sky. A single gray flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom.
He thought if he lived long enough the world at last would be lost. Like the dying world the newly blind inhabit, all of it slowly fading from memory.
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Shepard, Sam
O'Hagan, Andrew
Cleave, Chris
Wark, Kristy
Gatti, Tom
Publisher series
Information from the German Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
rororo (24600)
Original language
English
Canonical DDC/MDS
▾References

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Wikipedia in English (1)

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▾LibraryThing members' description
Book description
The Road follows a man and a boy, father and son, journeying together for many months across a desolate, post-apocalyptic landscape, some years – the period of time almost the same as the age of the boy – after a great, unexplained cataclysm.
Haiku summary
His world burned away,
A man walks seaward;
Tries to save the son.
(miken32)
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