The Road (Oprah's Book Club) (original 2006; edition 2007)

Given its Oprah and Pulitzer status, this is supposed to be a very profound book, but I just wasn't feeling it. Above all else, I think it's because my mind kept wandering to the movie Children of Men, which was also a post-apocalyptic hopeless-situation-with-a-tiny-glimmer-of-hope sort of story that was simply beautiful and left me in awe. Compared to it, The Road is just dismal and repetitious. I was glad it was under 300 pages, since at the halfway point I was already just DONE with the walking-along-the-road-and-hiding-from-people-and-finding-a-house-and-looting-it-for-food-rinse-and-repeat. I get what the repetition was doing, but that doesn't mean that I enjoyed it.

If I hadn't seen Children of Men, might I have enjoyed this more? It's possible, but difficult to determine. There's certainly something to be said for using simplicity to convey a story, but I kept feeling like so much more could have been done with the themes. ( )

Listen to springsteen's devils and dust while you're reading this book. You will not wake up the next morning. ( )

Listen to springsteen's devils and dust while you're reading this book. You will not wake up the next morning. ( )

Really good, albeit somewhat depressing. ( )

Firstly let me say that about half-way through this somewhat slight slip of a book I was non-plussed to learn that it was an Oprah bookclub selection. See previous posts for my counter-cultural tendencies but in this case the content was dark enough to justify breaking my own rules. In short, McCarthy's "The Road" is the story of a father and son as they make their way across the U.S. after an unspecified apocalypse. The details of the plot in and of themselves are not all that interesting but the book does make several interesting points about the human condition.

On the surface, the book is a simple admonishment to the reader to appreciate the state of the world under the orderly governance of human law. The unnamed protagonists are assailed by cannibals, faced with the possibility of starvation and constantly on the alert for an untimely end to their fragile lives on the planet. All this is relatively standard for the post-apocalypse genre. What is very slightly unusual is the idea that in such a situation pockets of benevolence will persist. The father and son travel in search of "the good guys" who, we presume, will take them in. What is not clear is how the couple knows that such people even exist given that they haven't fallen in with them up to this point. Further, it's ironic that despite their claims to being on the side of "good" (whatever "good" can really mean in such a situation) they demonstrate benevolence towards the other human beings they encounter only begrudgingly.

To sum up, this is a fine example of the genre but not really one that introduces any grand new ideas. The standard plots and subplots apply in the same expected ways. A good introduction to the idea for those who may not have read the 1,000 books on the same topic which preceded it or been blessed with having watched the 20 TZ episodes that deal with the situation... ( )