About this title: A man and his young son traverse a blasted American landscape, covered with "the ashes of the late world." The man can still remember the time before. The boy knows only this time. There is nothing for them but survival- they are "each other's world entire"- and the precious last vestiges of their own humanity. At once brutal and tender, ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780307277923ISBN:0307277925
Description: Acceptable. Minor moisture damage Overall below average used book. May have highlighting, underlining, notes, price sticker on cover, or be an ex-library book. read more
Edition: 26th Printing
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Vintage International, New York
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780307455291ISBN:0307455297
Description: Very Good. 287 Pages. Measures: 5-1/4" x 8" Clean, tight copy with no writing or markings. The spine is only slightly creased. Not an Ex-Library book. Colorfully illustrated cover. Includes a brief biography of the author as well as a list of his other writings. Author is winner of the Pulitzer Prize; book made into a major motion picture. read more
Description: Very Good. 0307387895 Paperback, Condition: Very Good; this book is in very good condition with light curve to the spine / light reading creases to the covers. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. 2006 Vintage Press Softcover(Trade PB) Edition. Some wear/creasing to cover/pages, text clean with strong binding. Ships Fast! read more
Edition: Large Print edition
Binding: hardcover pictorial
Publisher: Center Point Large Print
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9781585478934ISBN:1585478938
Description: Fair in good dust jacket. ex-library/associated marks/stickers, otherwise clean text; dj in protective sleeve & pasted down; general wear; spine slant; Large Print; Unabridged; read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780307387899ISBN:0307387895
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 287 p. Oprah's Book Club (Paperback). Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Fine. Trade Paperback. Vintage Books, 2007. Fine Book. Overall, a clean and tight, lightly read copy. Media mail packed in protective bubble lined shipping bags, Priority in a Flat Rate Envelope. Shipped quickly. Prompt response to questions. read more
"I had nightmares, granted I was reading it right before I went to sleep. What an amazing introduction to Cormac McCarthy if you've never read him (which I hadn't). I will check out Blood Meridian next. I recommend this book for all parents; the depiction of the son, especially the way the son observes everything, was fascinating. part of me wanted to give up on them to protect my psyche, because to care meant such anxiety, but I persevered. Perhaps it's the Lacan I've been reading lately, but when it was over, I had a lovely dream, where my daughter and I were running around, late for an occasion, in some elysian field."
"The Road is the best novel in decades and places Cormac McCarthy at the forefront of modern British and American novelists. Although his earlier novels (and play) have enjoyed consistent high praise and critical review, in The Road, McCarthy achieves a level of the novel as enduring art which even those who had predicted greatness for this author might not have imagined.
Although settings in prior novels have ranged from the mid-South to the American West at the turn of the century (viz., the Border Trilogy), their recent themes were brutally raw savagery (No Country for Old Men), and left no denouement other than survival. The Road goes onward, through apocalypse and savagery, to courage and finally to hope through fierce determination and unstinting love.
The story is that of the Man and the Boy, his son, who are striving to reach an unidentified place at the end of the road they follow, through a world burned, blackened and relentlessly mean. The place and the cause of the apacolpse are unidentified; the savagery they encounter is unimaginale terror, but they persist in their passage, relying upon their wits, determination. and mostly on each other.
Surpassing even the dehumanizing of the world and its constant savagery, is the love and the tenderness between the Man and the Boy. The lack of humanness and humaneness of their world only serves to heighten the tenderness between them.
McCarthy now joins the ranks of Faulkner, Crane, Melville, and Joyce, and a handful of others as those who have in a unique and original way touched the heartstone of the novel as an art form which evokes honest human emotion.
McCarthy is today's foremost writer in a world of language and place of his own, a unique and foreboding past, present, and future, From the deserts of the Southwest to a barren burned earth, he has found universal truth and told it in unique prose and passion.
Read this book; then read it again. This is best novel you will read this year, or next year, or have read in the past half century.
"No book in a long time has meant more to me than The Road. It’s been years since a book has grabbed hold of me and taken me on such a captivating, stunning journey. And I don’t remember any other contemporary literature that is more beautifully, starkly written. In other words, Cormac McCarthy has written a book that is on par with Beloved or The Shipping News—landmark modern novels by authors at the pinnacle of their craft. In still other words, The Road is one of the best books of the last 50 years.
This is just my opinion, of course. Naturally, I didn’t read every book published in the last five decades. And other book critics would disagree with me. (Many critics hailed the supremacy of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America, while I was fairly nonplussed about the fuss.) But The Road has greatness on multiple levels: a story that is under-wrought and overwhelming; pacing and plotting that are perfection; characters that are timeless and yet painfully mortal; and page after page of writing that is so accomplished that it begs to be read again and again. I couldn’t get enough of uncounted passages in The Road, and found myself re-reading entire paragraphs—for the simplicity and power of the dialogue, for certain astounding plot developments, and for the sheer beauty of McCarthy’s voice. This is not a book written for the sake of prettiness. It is a tight, austere, harrowing tale about the death of the world that happens to be gorgeous in its horror and its humanity. Consider the following excerpt from the novel:
"Beyond a crossroads in that wilderness they began to come upon the possessions of travelers abandoned in the road years ago. Boxes and bags. Everything melted and black. Old plastic suitcases curled shapeless in the heat. Here and there the imprint of things wrested out of the tar by scavengers. A mile on and they began to come upon the dead. Figures half mired in the blacktop, clutching themselves, mouths howling. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Take my hand, he said. I don’t think you should see this."
The Road is the account of a nameless father and son who are making their way down an unnamed road in an unknown country at an unspecified time. Ash covers everything and is carried in every gust of wind. The father pushes a shopping cart filled with their only possessions—dwindling food stores, threadbare clothing, and a gun with two bullets. The sun orbits a dimmed horizon, which appears to be obscured by a nuclear winter. History, animals, and vegetation are dead, as is the vast majority of the human race. The goal of the pair is simply to survive … and to keep heading south along the road to possible warmth. On their journey, we glimpse their struggle (illustrated by ghastly scenes like the one excerpted above), urge their survival, and embrace their tenuous yet tenacious bond as father and son and solitary travelers in a silent but perilous world. When I finished their story, I was stunned by its purity and power. I was amazed by McCarthy’s skill, and at his ability to simultaneously convey such fragile hope among such harsh hopelessness. And then I closed the cover of a book I knew was unlikely to forget."
"I read this book in less than 24 hours. It was so hard to put down.
I see that most of the other reviews have covered the storyline, so I will skip that.
I would like to address a few issues raised.
Yes, the writing is simplistic and can, at times, be so confusing as to make you reread sentences. But, I believe that McCarthy's use of this style is indicative of time. The man in the book is also lost and confused. Times are sparse, like the writing. Everything is boiled down to pretty much one simple thing: survival.
No, McCarthy never tells what transpired to cause the nuclear war. He can only tell you the man's viewpoint, anyway. Perhaps the man doesn't even know. Perhaps he was just minding his own business one day & looked up and the world had ended. Or, perhaps he knows but doesn't care, so never thinks about it. I mean, why would he care? Does it matter how it happened? No, it only matters that it happened.
Yes, this is a depressing book. However, if you read between the lines, it's also a triumph of the human spirit. Yes, there are cannibals and 'bad guys', humans who have given in to their basest instinct out of hunger and fear. However, there are also 'good guys' who are not willing to give in, who are willing to fght to survive without harming others.
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