Good, but maybe not worth all the hype that it's been getting. Not (at least for me) the powerful, life-changing story that I expected from a Pulitzer Prize winner. (

)

writertomg | Sep 6, 2017 |

desolante, criptico, angosciante, inquietante,.... ma da leggere (

)

SirJo | Sep 4, 2017 |

What a waste of time. A story where the world's gone to shit and there's a guy who does nothing about it. (

)

KyleLanser | Aug 28, 2017 |

The Road is dystopian fiction like none other—lean and brutal.

The hook in dystopian fiction—and I've read more than my fair share—varies. Sometimes it's a mystery novel in which the reader tries to figure out just how society arrived at its current misery. Other times it's a constructive story of learning to transform the dystopia into something positive. None of this matters for McCarthy. In The Road there are only three ontological realities:

1. Father
2. Son
3. Threats

The Road is a story of a father and son barely surviving in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Everything extemporaneous to the survival of this relationship is stripped from the narrative. The father and son are unnamed. Even their dialogue reflects this minimalism, quotation marks absent from the text:

"You walk too fast.
I'll go slower.
...
You're not talking again.
I'm talking.
You want to stop?
I always want to stop.
...
I know.
We'll stop. Okay?
Okay.
We just have to find a place.
Okay" (93).

How do you find a place where no place exists? How do you stop when to stop means to give up? These are the questions that propel McCormac's desolate vision. (

)

StephenBarkley | Aug 13, 2017 |

When people ask me what some of my favorite books are, this is always one of them. A dark story, yet with such a contrast of light and love between the father and his son. And the language McCarthy uses, simple and brilliant. A treasure to read. (

)

CherieKephart | Aug 3, 2017 |

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▾Published reviews

10 reviews

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thingScore 65

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 (16 possible)

Author name	Role	Type of author	Work?	Status
McCarthy, Cormac	—	primary author	all editions	confirmed
Preis, Thomas	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Stechschulte, Tom	Reader	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Testa, Martina	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed

▾Work-to-work relationships

Has the adaptation

The Road [2009 film] by John Hillcoat

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▾Common Knowledge

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Series (with order)

Canonical title

The Road

Original title

The Road

Alternative titles

Original publication date

People/Characters

Important places

Southeastern North America

Important events

Related movies

The Road (2009 ∙ IMDb)

Awards and honors

Pulitzer Prize (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)

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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.

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Last words

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Disambiguation notice

Publisher's editors

Blurbers

Publisher series

Information from the German Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.

rororo (24600)

Original language

English

▾References

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (1)

The Road

▾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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▾Library descriptions

In a novel set in an indefinite, futuristic, post-apocalyptic world, a father and his young son make their way through the ruins of a devastated American landscape, struggling to survive and preserve the last remnants of their own humanity.

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