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The Road by Cormac McCarthy
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The Road (2006)

by Cormac McCarthy

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
28,397128270 (4.07)1 / 1430
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)
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English (1,209)  French (20)  Spanish (13)  Dutch (8)  Italian (6)  German (5)  Swedish (5)  Danish (4)  Catalan (3)  Finnish (2)  Norwegian (2)  Czech (1)  Hebrew (1)  Bulgarian (1)  Portuguese (Portugal) (1)  Polish (1)  All languages (1,282)
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Showing 1-5 of 1209 (next | show all)
Intense. Everyday moments keep triggering flashbacks to this book. Hugged my parents a lot reading this book. Stared at houses and flowers. Thought about ethical dilemmas. Thought about people I knew, how would they act in a situation like The Road? Closest I've ever come to crying reading a book (I have never cried reading a book). Language/prose style hard to get into but once I got it I couldn't stop reading. Finished in three days. Don't think I can re-read it for a while, it takes a lot out of you. Affected my mood. Weather was grey throughout reading the book, once I finished the sun came out. (Okay not really relevant to the book itself but relevant to reading experience, I was very immersed) (will add more later) ( )
  mochibun | May 8, 2020 |
I read this book on vacation and now all I want to do is find and hold my son. ( )
  DerekCaelin | May 5, 2020 |
I was warned before reading this book that the story was dark. Hadn't seen the movie so I didn't know what to expect. Pretty horrifying but strangely plausible. Nothing like the dark side of humanity to beat the doldrums of a pandemic quarantine! This one stayed with me. ( )
  3argonauta | May 3, 2020 |
Not a book to recommend to anyone suffering the Coronavirus and its impact. The story is sad yet uplifting, survivors, a man and boy, walking, walking, walking following global devastation. The relationship between father and son is heartrending, tear jerking and uplifting. The desolation of the surroundings is matched by the prose. The characters have no names but they do have hearts. The frequent use of the word 'tarp' irritated me - it seems to appear about a thousand times and there is some contrivance over the finding of a first-aid kit on a deserted boat that might just come in useful later in the story. Here is an example of the straightforward, simple and stark prose, page. 296: 'Their progress was a torture. In two days when they came out upon a road he set the bag down and sat bent over with his arms crossed at his chest and coughed till he could cough no more'.
1 vote jon1lambert | Apr 6, 2020 |
  TheTrueBookAddict | Mar 22, 2020 |
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Showing 1-5 of 1209 (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
▾Work-to-work relationships

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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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