The Road

Paperback, 256 pages

English language

Published June 29, 2007 by Picador.

ISBN:
978-0-330-44754-6
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OCLC Number:
642565389

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4 stars (4 reviews)

Cormac McCarthy's tenth novel, The Road, is his most harrowing yet deeply personal work. Some unnamed catastrophe has scourged the world to a burnt-out cinder, inhabited by the last remnants of mankind and a very few surviving dogs and fungi. The sky is perpetually shrouded by dust and toxic particulates; the seasons are merely varied intensities of cold and dampness. Bands of cannibals roam the roads and inhabit what few dwellings remain intact in the woods.

Through this nightmarish residue of America a haggard father and his young son attempt to flee the oncoming Appalachian winter and head towards the southern coast along carefully chosen back roads. Mummified corpses are their only benign companions, sitting in doorways and automobiles, variously impaled or displayed on pikes and tables and in cake bells, or they rise in frozen poses of horror and agony out of congealed asphalt. The boy and his father …

35 editions

Overwrought, didn't quite land for me

3 stars

I can see why for many this is a beloved book for some, but it didn't capture me.

The writing often felt plodding and overwrought, instead of evocative and touching. And this novel is all scene and style and very little story, so there was not much else to go on.

I found myself wishing this had been a short story instead of a novel.

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rated it

5 stars
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rated it

3 stars