Amazon.com Review Best known for his Border Trilogy, hailed in the San Francisco Chronicle as "an American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century," Cormac McCarthy has written ten rich and often brutal novels, including the bestselling No Country for Old Men, and The Road. Profoundly dark, told in spare, searing prose, The Road is a post-apocalyptic masterpiece, one of the best books we've read this year, but in case you need a second (and expert) opinion, we asked Dennis Lehane, author of equally rich, occasionally bleak and brutal novels, to read it and give us his take. Read his glowing review below. --Daphne Durham Guest Reviewer: Dennis Lehane
Dennis Lehane, master of the hard-boiled thriller, generated a cult following with his series about private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, wowed readers with the intense and gut-wrenching Mystic River, blew fans all away with the mind-bending Shutter Island, and switches gears with Coronado, his new collection of gritty short stories (and one play).
Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehane
The Road is now a major motion picture based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, starring Academy Award-nominee Viggo Mortensen, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, and Kodi Smit-McPhee. Enjoy these images from the film, and click the thumbnails to see larger images.
Product Description NATIONAL BESTSELLER
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER National Book Critic's Circle Award Finalist
A New York Times Notable Book One of the Best Books of the Year The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times, New York, People, Rocky Mountain News, Time, The Village Voice, The Washington Post
The searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.
The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.
Great story, but very depressingMarch 21, 2010 Joseph McNeely(NY) Great book. A few typos but overall a great sad story. Took about 25 pages to get into, it is a father and son story in post apocalyptic America. I would say a must read, but it is a sad story and not for everyone, but as a father it definitely had an impact on me.
Likeable, but not always believableMarch 20, 2010 Joyce Harmon I thought this was a powerful novel, though perhaps not worthy of the Pulitzer. It was very original, however, and it's an important work. As a partent I do question some choices that the father made in the book. Makes me wonder if the author has children himself. I need to look that up.
an amazing bookMarch 17, 2010 K. Josic(Houston, TX USA)
McCarthy was recommended to me by many people over the years,
but I somehow never got around to reading any of his novels until now. "The Road"
was certainly a good place to start. The narrative is sparse, it is not
clear what happened to the world, or indeed where the Man and the Boy
are heading. What they hoping to achieve, beyond surviving to the next
day? Yet, the world that McCarthy creates seems real. It is perhaps exactly
because he stripped it bare, and the only thing he left was the thing that
matters most - the bond that we have between one another.
This is the first book I read by McCarthy, but I will definitely read more.
Bleak story of hopeMarch 16, 2010 Flight Risk (The Gypsy Moth)(usa) There is little I can add to the many accolades and positive reviews for this book, but I feel compelled to comment on it anyway.
Cormac McCarthy's vision of a dark netherworld brought on by an unnamed catastrophe is so addictive, you won't be able to put it down. It remained in my bathroom for days while I tried to devote time to another, much bigger and more time-consuming, book that I was supposed to be reading instead, but eventually the wrenching story of The Road won over all else. Every spare moment I had, I picked it up, and while I have said many times how slow a reader I am, I finished it in 2 days.
Two people, a man and his small son, creep through a world deadened by nuclear winter, brushing off ashes falling like snow and curling together in hidden spots amongst the dead trees at night, wary of every human encounter, working their way with dogged hope toward the South and possible deliverance. Their adventures along the way are gripping, haunting, and sad; the total devotion to each other is the sole uplifting spirit in the whole story. It is clear that the father will do anything to protect the boy; and in a world where everything that survives has gone feral and vicious, his tender attentions to his son speaks worlds of the power of love.
You will feel drained by this book - but somewhat hopeful as well. If such a thing ever happens, I would hope that there are more people like the father in this book than most of the people they run into. Absorbing, compelling, rich in dialogue between two scared people dependent completely on each other, and full of inventive solutions by the boy's father, the action in the book is evocative enough to visualize, real enough to feel. It is one of the best books I have read in a long time.
stark and stunningMarch 16, 2010 Mark Oestreicher(El Cajon, CA USA) 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
i've wanted to see this movie, but haven't gotten around to it. someone told me the book was really worth reading, so i picked this up in an airport when i was on a trip without a book; and i devoured it in 24 hours. it's a stunning, bleak, sparse telling of a post-apocalyptic landscape and the relationship between a father and the young son he's trying to protect. the relationship between the father and son is at time heartbreaking (the lengths the father goes to, and the numbness, fear and acceptance of what shouldn't be that overwhelms the boy), and at times relationally rich and beautiful. it's not one of those adventure stories that makes me want to experience their adventure, to be sure; but the hope the father holds onto, in the midst of impossible challenges, lifts the story up well beyond a scenario that would otherwise be merely brutal, indulgent storytelling.
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