Maybe because I caught a nasty summer cold and already feel dreadful but this book just left me sad and in tears. I don't know what else to say except McCarthy wrote a heart breaking book about the end of the world as we know it following a boy and his father. The book moves pretty quickly and sometimes you may get confused about who is talking (there are no quotes) but the book in the end shows you the worst of humanity and sometimes the best. 

"The Road" starts off with a man who is called Papa by a young boy. They are fighting to get somewhere since the man realizes the area in which they live has nothing left for them. From there we follow them as they follow the road and meet good people, bad people, and plain indifferent people. I wonder about the man's choices at times and also wondered could I also do what I would need to do in order to survive?

We have just the man and the boy as our entry into this world and honestly it is enough. The man we find used to be married and was left by his wife to raise the boy. The wife it seems either ran away or committed suicide (sorry I got confused at this part). The man is doing what he can to get the boy to safety. I also felt pity for both of them and liked that McCarthy didn't even tell us the man or boy's names. In this new world, names don't mean a thing. 

The man and boy come across others and see and hear things that are disturbing. The boy is the bright spot in this book. He wants to believe in the good in people and wants to help people. Goodness knows at times though I was with the man and was all, you need to toughen up since there are people out here eating each other. 

The writing was to the point. No words are wasted. The man has his goal and you feel his despair when he thinks of not being able to keep the boy safe. The flow was great.

The setting of this new world I assume is the United States post nuclear war based on things that were said about the weather and sky. Everything is gray and at one point it starts snowing ash and it's cold all of the time it seems. 

The ending leaves you with hope though and that the good guys can hold out. 

Post-apocalyptic stories are predictions of the future of "what ifs" the world is turn upside down and throw in some characters and see what they will do. Cormac McCarthy's take on The Road is so much about a man and his son (nameless) do when they are thrown in a situation that can lead to life or death and their relationship experiences during their journey on... the road. A Pulitzer Prize Winner in 2007, I can't help it when it comes to post-apocalyptic stories that I want to read, but finally, it is now that I had read it... and I do have mix feelings with it.

As the story opens, there was no mention of how this world began. A flash of light, the lost of government control and the world is in chaos. Dark gray skies that reflects the ocean, the world is cold, without warmth, food and water. Two characters were written without any names, as much as it is, are on the road going south in a nameless world, country or even state. Their journey takes them to places of unimaginable horrors (as written inside) that make's the man distrust humanity. And as a whole, the story just writes itself about their simple, and yet it is about hope. And there it ends - no beginnings, and yet no ends.

I can't say this is bad, and I won't say it is good. Its a book without chapters, and with just simple parts of writing that can be read in a day (took me days yes, but we all have other books to read). The thing about reading is some times, I have no idea who is talking first - the man or his son. There are no open close dialogues here. I had to read it to know who is who. While the description of the world building is bleak as it is, its prose is lyrical and beautifully written. Ovefrall I do enjoy the read but I am not sure if this is a favorite. Maybe when I pick it up again and read it one more time, I might change my opinion on this. Its a 3.5 rating out of 5 for me.

This is ostensibly a Western. I, ostensibly, do not like Westerns. I've never made it through any western film unless you count Native American stories, and I don't. I'll grant you that it's set in the Southwest. But this is no normal Western. While reading it, it actually feels like a saga, the word "sweeping" comes to mind. The boys ride wide open terrain, wild animals are always nearby; the weather is harsh, life can be harsher. It is so quintessentially American I can imagine some politician using it for his (yes, his) campaign. (Of course that politician and nobody on his staff would realize that many things about this book clash with their proposed platform.) It's deceptively simple and mind-bendingly complex. Characters speak in short simple sentences (save Alejandra's grandmother,) the meanings layer themselves one on top of another and before you know it, it's slipped from our grasp.

I could tell you the plot, but that's almost beside the point.

Riddled with death and grim reality, it retains a sense of purity and near-innocence. Our main character, John Grady, is moral, stoic and honest to a fault, a criminal and a man-child. On one level the book is violent and gritty, but if you flip it over it's a spiritual fairy tale of sorts. Is it a metaphor, a myth, a prayer, or as the writing would suggest, a lullaby? Do the characters make their own choices, or are they simply puppets played by the strings of fate? Think of every contradiction and this book could probably fit most.

It's fun to read all sorts of books. I see no reason for shame about a beach read or a comic book or a "genre" read like a western. But when it comes down to it, the reason I read is not simply to entertain or to distract myself but rather to find something between the pages that helps me understand and delve further into the state of being human in this oftentimes cruel and confusing world. That could be a particularly good YA novel or a book about a baseball game. All the Pretty Horses is one of those books - a book that defines the reason I read.

Listen up, people.  The author of this book has sent his story to us back through time to help us prepare for the coming apocalypse.  His message is this: After the apocalypse there will be no more quotation marks.  Commas and apostrophes will be in short supply.  Periods will outlast them all.  Please use punctuation sparingly and recycle when possible.

Ok, I’m joking.  Sort of.  The above paragraph was triggered by the odd punctuation choices the author made.  More on that later.  This is a post-apocalyptic survival story in which “the man” and “the boy” travel, more or less, down a road toward the southeast part of the U.S.  Some sort of major catastrophe, the source of which is only hinted at, has blocked the sun, destroyed most life, and left ash coating everywhere.  The story is basically about their travel down the road, the dangers they face, and their relationship with each other.

This book doles everything out sparingly – prose, dialogue, world-building, and even punctuation.  I guess that was the purpose to the missing punctuation; it was an attempt to fit with the style of the writing itself.  I couldn’t find any deeper message to it, anyway.  It was a little distracting at first, but it wasn’t usually too difficult to follow, especially since there were usually only two characters.

The dialogue sometimes consisted of several short lines of one to five words each running down the page, alternating between the boy and the man.  It’s one reason the book was such a fast read; there just weren’t that many words on a page, especially not during the sections of dialogue.  I kind of liked the dialogue, though.  I felt like there was a lot being said with those few words, that they knew each other so well that they didn’t have to express themselves verbosely to get a point across. 

The spare world-building bugged me a little, though.  We don’t even know the boy’s age, or how long it’s been since the apocalypse, or what exactly happened, although we do get some hints on the latter.  We don’t know how widespread it is.  We don’t know how people survived the initial event, or why so few did.  The book seemed to be about conveying an experience, and a relationship, and it did so in a very impactful way, but the story itself wasn’t very satisfying to me.  It was a quick read that held my attention, but I wanted more meat. 

The world itself, however is painted very vividly.  I read about half of this book on my deck where I could enjoy the fresh air, sunlight, and green things as an offset to the bleak, dim, ash-filled setting my head was filled with.  Future readers may also want to have fresh water and fruit handy…

Next Book

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams.  I don’t really know anything about this book, but I did read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy about 15 or 20 years ago, so I have a general expectation of silliness.  I was pretty lukewarm in my reaction to Hitchhiker’s, but I’m curious to try the author again after all of these years and it’s possible that silly might seem nice after the book I just finished. :)