Seems Oprah’s Book Club has finally stumbled onto Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road‘ this month (OMG, I just linked to Oprah’s web site, somebody tackle me). I read the hardcover edition late last year on a whim while browsing the Dallas Love airport bookstore (and I had seen it climbing up the NYT Bestseller List in USA Today).
From the book cover inset:
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.
One of the most striking things about this book (besides his brilliant writing) is how McCarthy uses his own stylistic punctuation and absolutely no character identification in the dialogue (think A Million Little Pieces). Some readers may not like this, but I think he pulled it off wonderfully.
Checkout the October 8, 2006 New York Times review (warning, some mild spoilers on page 3).
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