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The Road | 
| Author: Cormac Mccarthy
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  225 reviews
Sales Rank: 217
Media: Paperback
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0330447548
EAN: 9780330447546
ASIN: 0330447548
Publication Date: June 1, 2007
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| Customer Reviews: Read 220 more reviews...
 A worthy winner of the Pulitzer Prize December 5, 2008
In a post-apocalyptic USA, two of the small numbers of survivors are a man and his young son, and the story describes their pitiful search for food and shelter.
This was an unusual reading experience for me, because early on I found myself experiencing feelings such as boredom, frustration and occasionally dislike for the writing style and the narrow-width story line. Then, like the sun rising, I `got it'. I lost any sense of boredom and gradually realised that all of the elements that I disliked became the same reasons that I liked it so very much. I now know that not only was this the right story told the right way, but it probably couldn't have been told any other way. The overwhelming message was one of desolation and hopelessness, and I am sure I have never before experienced such emotions portrayed so completely and so literally in a piece of fiction.
The man and his son have no names at any time, although the boy calls his father `Papa'. There are no speech marks throughout, a McCarthy signature I believe, and gradually I realised that this perfectly suited the mood. The prose is ruthless yet poetic. No place-names are ever mentioned and I can only conclude that their journey - along the road - took place in the north-eastern region of the USA, based on the bitterly cold temperatures and the fact that the coast was about 200 miles to the east. I was always curious to know much more about `what happened' several years before, but I was left to guess that it must have been a nuclear war that had devastated the entire country and possibly the rest of the world. The answers never came but in the end, it didn't matter. The over-riding sensations I felt as I read through the story were mostly gratitude that I have food and a roof over my head, and a fervent hope that such an apolcalyse never happens at any time in the future, whether it is in my lifetime or not. It made me realise that, climate change aside, we may actually determine the outcome of life on our planet. The horrifying truth is that we could all but destroy it. This tale paints a picture of a world without sunshine, without wildlife, a world of complete hopelessness.
It's not a long story and can be read in a single sitting with ease but it leaves a powerful and vivid impression in the mind's eye. Truly, this is a novel to remember and to be savoured as one of the special tales in anyone's personal collection. It may be fiction, but I really hope it never comes true.
 Excellent book, not as literary as it thinks. December 4, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The narrative voice in 'The Road' is as effective as it is mannered. McCarthy's prose is overwrought, drawing attention to itself not in order to foreground, but instead manifesting in a jarring sense of critical distance. Indeed, there are points at which the astute reader can more or less follow the thought processes of the author. The 'style' in which McCarthy couches his prose seems at times extremely laboured. The conclusion is underwhelming, further strengthening the overall impression of superfluous artifice which, like those two very words, isn't as clever as it thinks it is.
A powerful work December 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Road is set in a post-apocalyptic world of ash and dust, devoid of sunlight, the setting vividly realised by McCarthy despite his scant prose. The story follows the journey and struggle to survive of a man and his son as they travel across America in search of hope. The picture of humanity laid bare by disaster is bleak, but for me the redemption of the father and son's love and devotion to one another offers the true hope and goodness of the story and meant that I ultimately found it a positive story. The dialogue is sparse and short, emphasised by the style of the writing, but the true love between the father and son is in their actions.
I've done a tremendous disservice to the book in trying to summarise it briefly in my own clumsy words. In short, it is an important book and, whilst other reviews show it's clearly not for everyone, I found it by turns uplifting and depressing, but always moving. Highly recommended.
 The end of the world November 29, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The world has ended. A man and his boy are just trying to stay alive. They can trust no-one, they can't trust the food, they can't trust the land. They just keep following the road. The road, of course, is life, you don't need a degree in English Literature to figure that one out.
This is the first time I've read McCarthy. I saw No Country for Old Men at the cinema, and I heard about the Road winning awards, so I figured I'd give it ago. He's a very sparse writer. It would be hard to say there are characters in the novel as everything is reduced down to survival, and the main character is constantly at the point of giving up his principles and humanity in the face of everything he has lost, but hangs on for his boy. There is no flowery description, just enough to evoke the situation with a few carefully chosen words. Sometimes the sparseness, the rendering of sense to a short sentence, is beautiful in its construction. There's no room for trickery, you have to take the prose on its merits.
Details are few. You don't know why the world ended (though there is a sense that, to paraphrase Charlton Heston, the maniacs blew it up) and you don't get any names.
A lot of the professional reviews talk about cynicism and pessimism in the novel, but that's not true. It is relentless. It's about maintaining your humanity, it's about sacrifice, and devotion and principles, in the face of despair.
It's not the first treatment of the idea, by any means. I don't even think it's the best. But it is exceptionally good. And it is highly recommended.
So I'm off to read the back catalogue of this writer and see what I've missed.
 I cant believe the hype, seriously disappointing November 28, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book is rubbish, in appearence its like a first draft by a novice writer, there's no punctuation and the grammer becomes confused and it becomes a bit of a task reading it.
The story is told in a series of short paragraphs, for some of McCarthy's reading public this seems to have a lot of appeal and people are waxing lyrical about it being like poetry but I've just found it tedious and trying to read so far. I also find it maddening that the characters have no names and are constantly referred to as "the man" and "the boy". In truth I've enjoyed the Wikipedia, reviews and second hand information about the book more than the book itself so far.
Its not a work of stand alone brilliance in terms of post-apocalytpic fiction either. Narratives about paternal figures struggling to protect their nearest and dearest in "end of days/dying sun" style struggles for existence have been done before. Its not as original a story telling tool as a lot of reviews seem to think, what about Stephen King's The Mist? Or David Brin's The Postman?
Unlike some of McCarthy's other critics I liked the idea that no conclusions where reached about what had lead to the protagonist's predictament or what the fate of the world was. Its not impossible to fill in the gaps, nuclear disaster, solar flare, environmental crisis, whatever. Its not essential to the storyline and it allows for more of a focus upon the day to day trials of "boy" and "man" on the run from cannibals, peadophiles and other assorted dregs.
Which I think is what McCarthy was aiming at, its a real shame no one told him to write it properly, there's the beginnings of something decent here but that's all it is, a "could have been".
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