If there is a better living writer than Cormac McCarthy I don't know who it would be. I know, I know, his books focus on men but just when did that become a bad thing? The Road is about a father and son, and it's a beautiful story. The setting is bleak, or stark, or think of your own depressing word here; but all the grim events only serve to set off the wonder and strength of the relationship and the humanity it illuminates. In contrast to the author's other books like All the Pretty Horses that rely on realistic detail to tell the story and draw the reader in to the unfamiliar word inhabited by the characters, The Road is just the opposite; there is little detail, nothing is explained but the reader is drawn in no less skillfully. If the book doesn't bring a tear to the eye, this reviewer is befuddled. ( )

McCarthy has a classic on his hands. This book was utterly amazing. Some of these images he created will stay with me for a really long time. Love, loss, courage, the will to survive, and simple pain. It completely blew me away. ( )

Again, I am reminded that books are worth more than 5 stars. I'm so glad that I read it. It was good enough that I'm probably going to read other books by Cormac. It's terrifying to think that this is really what the world could become. The writing style was unlike anything that I've ever read, and there were times in the book that I was breathing rapidly and the hair on my arms was standing up. I couldn't put it down- I was disappointed to have to do anything that took me away from reading it. Worth every page. ( )

I received this book as a gift and was looking forward to reading it but found myself quite bored right away. I understand that there are really only 2 main characters in the book so the dialogue is almost non-existent. I have never read a book that was written in this fashion before so I appreciated reading something new that I wasn't used to. If you are hoping for an action filled story line you will not find it with The Road. Many people I know have said they struggled through this one and I agree. It was not a favourite but I do give it kudos for exposing me to a new style of writing and few suspenseful moments. ( )

Do not get it. My friend summed this up with admirable symplicity: It's like a book you'd get out a high school library, by which he meant UK high school, and it'd be the sort of thing you'd read age 14. McCarthy is an immensely skilled writer, but this is pretty obvious post-apocalyptic stuff. Morality tale. So hoary it's got knotholes. I'll stick with his westerns, thanks. ( )

Personally I disliked this book. I was glad once I had finished it and I shall not read it again.
It has polarised our book club to either love or hate.
Its well written but I found it a real drag.
I didnt connect with the boy or his father and I found mysefl disinterested to whether they survived or not.
The story is of a father and son in a post apocalyptic world where order has dissolved. The are on the road to reach the sea where the father believes that the world will be better.
I guess the book is meant to be a look at relationships when all is in despair (which is how I felt reading it). ( )

In 2006, Cormac McCarthy pulped a book about the end times. However you want to label it and say how this comes to be, he leaves that to you, but what he spins on the pages is a story of suspense, survival, and of finding hope in a place void of it.

The Road's two characters are a son and a father. The father is attempting to survive any way he can, and he never lets the son lose hope.

The Road follows suit with other McCarthy works with minimal punctuation and without proper names. The characters have no names, much like the Clint Eastwood character in the 70's. But this doesn't make them any less real or tangible. At the end of the novel, you feel like you have walked through the apocalypse with them.

This is not a horror book, but it does have some horrific scenes in it. I think what works the best, with horror, is when it is a subtle thing. One scene, in The Road, the two characters come across something terrible. This terribleness is not described in graphic detail, but the reader is given just enough to realize what is happening, and to realize the peril that the two protagonists are in. This is a good lesson to us writers: sometimes the imagination can scare a person better than any printed word.

The Road is a quick read. It's not long and it isn't supposed to be. Everything that is in it is for a purpose, and there is no filler. At no point, in reading The Road, do you think: we're just wasting time here. Every second is stacked with story, and every page filled with what it totally and completely necessary.

There's a reason why Cormac McCarthy is considered one of the best author's of this generation. His story weaving is something to breathe in deeply. The Road is a great start if you haven't read McCarthy before. ( )

I finished 'Suttree' in the morning and then read 'The Road' in three hours. A wonderful book. ( )

An excellent novel about a man and his son in a post-apocalyptic world trying to survive as they journey south to what they hope is a warmer climate. The horrors, challenges and suffering they endure is described in stark, concise language, evocative of the world in which they are living. And yet this dark, dismal, horrific story is uplifted by the loving relationship of parent and child.

An amazing story that I will carry with me for a long time.

Strange, disturbing yet reassuring - good will triumph no matter what is faced! ( )

McCarthy's take on the fragility of humanity, love, and kindness in a post-apocalyptic terrain. ( )

The Road is a change of style for the Faukerneresque McCarthy, written in such a spare, minimalist, poetic style. I found it compelling and hard to put down, surprising for a book with only 2 characters for the most part--a father and his son. They are travelling a road to the coast after having survived a disaster of the worst sort that has wiped everything off the earth. Trees are charred, houses are empty, food is practically nonexistent. Survivors are understandably deranged; I can't imagine how I'd feel knowing that I was perhaps one of 200 people left on the entire earth.

Why go to the coast. There is water there and maybe things are different because of it. But father & son finally arrive, all the worse for wear, and nothing is really different. The horrors they see along the way, the fear they suffer daily, would persuade any person to sign off. But I guess there is the bare hope that something good might happen again even though there is little evidence to support such a hope.

The book is suspenseful. What will happen to them? What is out there? Once I felt the book got so grim that I'd quit reading it. But I came home from work one night & sat on the couch to finish the remaining 60 pages. There are no answers. I liked it.

sucked ( )

This is not my typical genre of book at all, but with all of the attention it was getting, I thought I would check it out. The setting of the story is so bleak, there's not much left of the world, and danger is everywhere. The relationship between the father and son is very touching, and it's really what the story is all about. This story gets back to the basics of what is really important and makes you appreciate your comfortable life. ( )

A man and his son travel through post-apocalyptic America.

Whenever a Big, Earthshaking, Oprah-Loved-It-And-Everyone-Must-Read-It-Or-Else book comes along, I expect to be the lone voice of dissent. I’m going to hate it. It’s going to flop for me. I’m going to wonder what the hell everyone else is thinking.

Of course, I almost always love it.

This time, I figured I’d skip a step and just expect to love THE ROAD from the get-go. And wouldn’t you know it, but I can’t say as I did.

I did like it. I found it readable and evocative and all that jazz. But I’m almost certain I’ll have forgotten all about it by this time next week.

I feel like some sort of an emotional cripple. Everyone else on the planet thinks THE ROAD was a total sob-fest, filled with poignant contemplations on the nature of love and devotion and meaning and spirituality and seven million other wonderful things. And I mean, I know it was, but I rarely felt it.

I got it. I may be an emotional cripple, but an intellectual dunce I ain’t. I done my time on the literature front, my dears. I done it good. And I’ll tell you, you could get a couple dozen paper topics out of this book wicked easy. You could spend a week or two discussing it in class. There’s a lot to mull over here, a lot to think about and paw through and ramble on about. I can think of about a thousand discussion questions I’d like to take a class through.

I mean, how many people have mentioned McCarthy’s sparse prose in your (glowing) reviews? There’s a paper or two just in the way he’s pared everything down. Why do some contractions deserve apostrophes while others dont? How do the absent quotation marks influence our reaction to the dialogue? How do the many brief scenes drive the narrative forward? What’s going on with that one chunk of first person in the sea of third? Would you that the nameless characters, divorced from pre-apocalypse social norms, allow us to insert ourselves into the text? Etc. etc.

Then there’s the world itself. Why do you think McCarthy never tells us just what happened? Do you think it’s important to know how society reached this state? How does McCarthy show us the tension between the father/son duo and the rest of society? Between the man and the boy themselves? In what ways does hunger drive the story forward? How would the book be different if the man and the boy traveled through a warm wasteland? Is THE ROAD science fiction masquerading as literature or literature masquerading as science fiction? In what ways does it coincide with and diverge from our expectations of both literature and science fiction?

So there’s a lot here. It’s an intellectually stimulating book. There were moments, too, when I came this close to realizing what everyone was on about. (There’s a particularly good scene where the man and the boy cower in the gutter while a cannibalistic convoy rolls along past them. It chilled me). I could tell you all about how the story's many layers appealed to me, and how I found that McCarthy's approach drove the story onwards in some interesting ways. But at day’s end, I feel all right about passing this book along. I'm pretty sure I'll try more of McCarthy's work in the future, but I won’t need to read this one again.

(A slightly different version of this review originally appeared on my blog, Stella Matutina). ( )

Try to imagine an apocalyptic event destroying most of the earth: scorching fire, eerie darkness, total devastation, and death. Several years pass. No electric, no running water, no new crops thus food supplies dwindle. More death. People disappear and corpses accumulate. Gray ash continuously falls from the sky coating the earth. The sun does not shine and it is always damp and cold. “Barren. Silent. Godless.” And then "The Road" begins. "The Road" is bleak and frightening, but beautifully written. Cormac McCarthy draws the reader into the story with graphic images of the surroundings, strong characters, and effortless poetic prose. The writing style is simple. The dialogue has no punctuation; naturally primitive….like the surroundings in the story.

Against all odds, an unnamed father and son take to the road traveling on foot foraging food, fresh water, and shelter. They search for salvation. Small gangs of marauders roam the forsaken countryside. The father and son hide from all strangers. Strangers could be thieves, murderers, or worse…they could be evil. They could practice cannibalism. Strangers are “the bad guys”.

"The Road" is about faith and love. The father’s love for his son is absolute. He would do anything to protect his child…and does. “There were times when he sat watching the boy sleep that he would begin to sob uncontrollably but it wasn’t about death…..He thought it was about beauty or about goodness. Things that he’d no longer any way to think about at all”. And the son knows that he is loved, and it gives him faith and hope. In spite of the evil that surrounds them the son is pure of spirit and innocent of sin. The father is the son’s protector, and the son is the father’s spiritual guide.

And when "The Road" ends and you think you know how it ended, go back to the father’s thoughts and instructions to his son, like the passage on page 160 and reread, and then think again. Cormac McCarthy leaves the reader to wonder….. The movie is being released this coming week and I am looking forward to seeing how Hollywood interpreted the ending. I have already seen ads for the movie and I have a feeling it will be totally different from the book. The son is only a child in the book whereas in the movie he is 13 years old. I guess they re-wrote all the dialogue and quite a bit more to adapt to that change. I suspect the movie will be typical Hollywood style; lots of sensationalized violence and drama and very little spiritual meaning…..mediocre at best. The 2006 Pulitzer Prize winning book was extraordinary. ( )

Sad, disturbing, and exceptionally good. ( )

Quite probably the greatest book I have read. ( )

As a post-apocalyptic story this one is about par with a many others in this sub-genre of science fiction. What makes it good is the way McCarthy tells the story. Using a sparse economic writing style that is matter of fact, and has a cadence that draws you into this treck of this dark, bleak hopeless world. You can feel the cold and smell the ashes.
Overall I enjoyed this book, but like many others I could't tell you why. ( )

This was another one of those, 'I read it in a day but when I was done I couldn't tell if I liked it or not' books. It was just so damn depressing, and the author's style isn't my favorite but it did mesmerize me and convince me to want to see the upcoming movie... I just hope the movie is a little more uplifting. ( )

Depressing, yet somehow strangely intriguing. I had to keep reading to find out what the heck was going on. You really root for the main characters in their struggle. ( )

I hate to say it, but I was underwhelmed. The book was engaging and interesting to read, for at least the first 50 pages, but the story never seemed to go anywhere. I was also offended by the [LIGHT SPOILER] scene when the man and son come upon an infant's corpse that has been cooking over a fire to be eaten. [/LIGHT SPOILER] How pointlessly gratuitous can you get? As a reader, I'd already been lead to understand what the other "travelers" were doing for food; this scene seemed pointless but for the gross-out/shock value.

The suddenly-happy ending came out of nowhere, and though I'm sure one could go on about symbolism and McCarthy's intended message, on the most basic level I can't say I enjoyed this book. ( )

The trailer I saw to the upcoming film of this book intrigued me. The film appears to be a special effects vision of post-apocalyptic battles between ragged survivors and cannibalistic refugees from the Deliverance hillbillies.The book, fortunately, is nothing of the sort. Yes, it is a tale of post-apocalypse survival, but McCarthy has crafted an amazing character study where all the characters are faceless (symbolically) and nameless (literally). Don't expect neatly wrapped up plot lines, McCarthy's forte has always been experiencing a moment in time ( )

This book was loaned to me by Tim McIlrath of RISE AGAINST while we were on tour this summer... I knocked it out in around two days.The question asked force you to look deep inside your self and spend a little time there.Would you?, Could you?I realize that this was an Oprah Book, and it leans towards the psuedo-intellectual... but anything that forces thought, reflection and conversation is alright by me. ( )

The landscape in this book reminded me of the bleak landscape in a computer game I played once. It has the same feeling of forsaken Godlessness and the same constant menace of unseen hazard. It is a landscape of the mind. Have we not all rehearsed in our imaginations how we might survive in such circumstances? It is hell on earth. The bag lady on the street and the drug addict in the gutter are there already, scavenging for food and preyed on by others. Perhaps McCarthy's world waits for all of us. It is stripped of everything beautiful, and while there are still pockets of goodness and love, there is no hope.
All the same, this is a thrilling read. My copy is encrusted with the highest recommendations from illustrious international reviewers, and I can only add mine to the chorus. ( )