The Road (Oprah's Book Club)

The Road (Oprah's Book Club) by Cormac McCarthy (based on 1675 customer reviews)

(Paperback)
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Publisher: Vintage Books

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Most useful review as voted by customers:
480 out of 592 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 9/27/06

Brilliant and endearing and ultimately uplifting.

THE ROAD is a tremendous achievement, multi-layered, yet with enough surface story to attract mainstream readers. It resonates with classic allusions, simple parables, endearing moments, aphorisms, even some old testament language a la BLOOD MERIDIAN. In fact all of McCarthy's earlier novels are echoed here.

As with NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, all of the doomsday clocks, both personal and communal, stop at 1:17, a reference to John 1:17 in the Book of Revelations. As with his previous novel, McCarthy names love as the one value worth living for in this vale of tears, the last thing to go.

Comic relief is provided in the form of Ely, the only named character in the book. Readers will have to judge for themselves whether they think that Ely is the prophet Elijah, Christ in ragged disguise, Buddha on the Road, or just a funny old man who speaks in koans.

THE ROAD will remind some of Jose Saramago's BLINDNESS, which won the Nobel Prize for that deserving author. Others will liken the beautiful writing to the very best of Ernest Hemingway--with the understatement one finds in BIG, TWO-HEARTED RIVER and THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA.

Cliched? Not in this reader's eyes. Of course the great themes here have been rendered before in the classics, and books are made of books. I immediately recognized Homer's ghosts of hades in here, pointing and pleading and crying for help.

What is the quote in THE ROAD on page 110? "Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it." Which resonates to a quote from Marcus Aurielius, saying that a man ought to live his life as if borrowed, and that he ought to be prepared at any time to give it back, saying--here, I thank you for this life which I have had in my possession.

I found it uplifting. A testament to the condition of humanity and the nature of death and the riddle of existence. Universal themes, the greatest themes in our literature.

463 out of 527 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 3/28/07

The future is now...

"The Road" is a work of stunning, savage, heartbreaking beauty. Set in the post-apocalyptic hell of an unending nuclear winter, Cormac McCarthy writes about a nameless man and his young son, wandering through a world gone crazy; bleak, cold, dark, where the snow falls down gray; moving south toward the coast, looking somewhere, anywhere, for life and warmth. Nothing grows in this blasted world; people turn into cannibals to survive. We don't know if we're looking at the aftermath of a nuclear war, or maybe an extinction level event -- an asteroid or a comet; McCarthy deliberately doesn't tell us, and we come to realize it doesn't matter anyway. Whether man or nature threw a wild pitch, the world is just as dead.

The boy's mother is a suicide, unable to face living in a world where everything's gone gray and dead. Keep on living and you'll end up raped and murdered along with everybody else, she tells the man before she eats a bullet. The man and his son are "each the other's world entire"; they have only each other, they live for each other, and their intense love for each other will help them survive. At least for a while.

But survival in this brave new world is a dicey prospect at best; the boy and the man are subjected to sights no one should ever have to see. Every day is a scavenger hunt for food and shelter and safety from the "bad guys", the marauding gangs who enslave the weak and resort to cannibalism for lack of any other food. We are the good guys, the man assures his son. Yet in their rare encounters with other living human beings, the man resorts to primitive survivalism, refusing help to a lost child and a starving man, living only for himself and his son, who is trying to hold onto whatever humanity he has left. It's in these chance encounters with other people, even more than their interaction with each other, that we see them for who they really are. The boy is a radiantly sweet child, caring, unselfish, wanting and needing to reach out to others, even though this bleak, blasted world is the only environment he's ever known; the father, more cautious, more bitter, has let the devastation enwrap him until all he cares about is himself and his son. And to hell with everybody else.

Their journey to the coast is an unending nightmare through the depths of hell and the only thing that holds them together is their love for each other. When one is ready to give up, the other refuses to let him. I won't let you go into the darkness alone, the man reassures his son. But ultimately, as the boy finds out, everyone is on his own, and all you can do is keep on keeping on.

McCarthy has proven himself a master of minimalism; with a style as bleak as the stripped terrain the man and the boy travel through, but each sentence polished as a gem, he takes us into the harsh reality of a dying world. The past is gone, dead as the landscape all around them, and the present is the only reality. There is no later, McCarthy says. This is later. Deep down the man knows there is nothing better to hope for down the road, even though he keeps them both slogging down it, only to keep his son alive. And we keep slogging down that road with them, hoping against hope that around the next corner or five miles down the line, maybe there is something, anything, to make survival worth while.

Living in such a hell, why would anyone want to survive? The mother made her decision; she checked out long ago. We come to the end of this book totally drained, enervated, devastated, but curiously uplifted. Because as long as there is love, McCarthy tells us, maybe there is something to live for, and as the book shows us at the end, maybe there is a even little bit of hope.

Judy Lind

229 out of 304 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 9/26/06

"This is the way the world ends..."

In a barren, ashen landscape that was once the United States of America, a weary man and his young son are traveling south in search of the ocean. They scavenge for food and shelter, and they must constantly avoid marauding bands of fellow survivors who would prey on them. The one thing that sustains them on their way is their ferocious love for each other. THE ROAD is the story of their heartbreaking journey.

Every now and then, when we need reminding, a great writer shows us one possible future for our species if we continue on the path to self-destruction. In 1957, Nevil Shute gave us ON THE BEACH, and now, 50 years later, Cormac McCarthy has given us an eloquent new version of the same cautionary tale. We didn't listen then. Perhaps we can learn something now.

I have rarely been so moved by a work of literature. To call this the most important novel of 2006 is an understatement. Read it and weep. Read it and be uplifted. Just read it--before it's too late.

73 out of 79 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 9/29/07

A Dark, Lyrical Meditation on Love's Dedication

"The nights were blinding cold and casket black and the long reach of the morning had a terrible silence to it."

"...Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland."

I neither buy nor read collections of poetry. I can count the poems I know, at least the non-limerick ones, on a single hand. I'm not a fan of poetry, and I truly see much of it as overblown, a good thing taken to a ridiculously inflated extreme. This book isn't poetry, but it's also not pure narrative. It's somewhere in the gray between, and I enjoyed every single page of it.

McCarthy had me on the 14th line when I read "granitic beast." No, I didn't have to be told this was a reference to stone. Its use here, early in the work, deliberate, familiar yet uncommon, communicated to me exactly what this book would be about, and more importantly how it would be told, and I couldn't wait to ingest it. The contemplated and intentional use of this word in this place told me of texture and color and temperature, and its context told me of fear, uncertainty, cruelty, and the close specter of menace. I was hooked before the first page was done.

I enjoyed this book's writing style immensely, its story simple and told in a manner that came to me clearly, instantly creating depth with a minimum of prose. Words like "envaccuuming," and phrases like "iscocline of death" were absolutely brilliant--I bite my hand melodramatically wishing I'd written them. This highly evocative austerity was mirrored in the father's and the son's conversations, in which so little was said, but in which I was seeing absolutely clearly the cant of a head, a look in the eyes, the faintest curl of smile. I was reminded very happily of the magnificent work of James Dickey, especially To the White Sea (Delta World War II Library).

And the wonderfully lyrical story unfolded. No, I didn't need quotation marks or crucial apostrophes. There was never any question what was happening, who was saying what or where the story was headed. Honestly, do they care about proper punctuation in the wasteland? I didn't miss a thing, and the modestly different narrative presentation didn't faze me in the least. In fact, it reminded me instantly of e e cummings. Ah, reluctantly back to poetry. Later on when the pair made it to the sea, and the prose touched on "...shuttling..," instantly T. S. Eliot's classic came to mind.

I very much enjoyed the father, an object lesson in survival and just what that takes. He not only was educated, but also remembered it and knew how and when to apply it. He was inventive, attentive and observant, and deliberately learned from every experience. He anticipated, adapted and showed the courage to take immediate action, having thought through consequences beforehand. He was no MacGyver, but from the opening minutes of the crisis he knew what was at hand; his survival, and his son's, were due to his seriousness and intelligence and his application of them.

This book is not about the end of the world. It's not about nuclear winter, man's inevitable murder of the planet, the inherent barbarity of man, none of that. This book is about the only thing that matters, a parent's love for a child, and what at the absolutely basic level of survival you can and cannot do for those whom you treasure most, what you will go through and what you must decide upon for them to have all they need and deserve. This book is about the rapture and the agony of parenthood. It took me two nights to read this book, and both nights after midnight when I reluctantly put it down, I went upstairs to re-tuck-in my daughter and my son, and to kiss them in their sleep, through the silent tears of adoration this book brought forth.

This unpleasantly dark, ominous book reminded me of a few crucial things: My daughter and my son are the most incredible and important things I have ever done or will ever do. Their well-being is never assured, and I can never, ever stop looking out for them and teaching them what I know of their world. One day I will move on, and they must be ready when that happens.

Bottom line: This is not a cheery, happy, frothy and light read. It is cold and hard and painful. But there is joy in it. Be ecstatic it is only a story, that tonight you sleep in a bed in a house, with food, water, and your dog on the hearth. Be aware of and happy that you are reading this expertly rendered, a magnificently crafted work of highly evocative prose, and look forward to the next one, whatever the subject.

32 out of 42 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 3/28/07

A Road Trip Through Hell

Cormac Mccarthy's The Road is a dark, post apocalyptic journey through the remnants of the world as we know it, with the faintest flicker of hope at the end.

Destroyed by some never quite explained catastrophe, the Earth has become nearly inhospitable to life. A thick ash smothers everything and hangs in the sky, making a cold, quiet moonscape where things had once been green and alive. Through this nightmare world travels bands of desperate survivors, including an unnamed man and his son. The father's plan is to travel south to warmth and the ocean, where he hopes to find their salvation. Along the way they are confronted by cannibals, thugs and others as adrift as they are, a Darwinian struggle reminiscent to some degree of the lost boys in The Lord of the Flies, but far more sinister and disturbing. In particular, the image of the captives of the cannibals- who are being eaten bit by bit, shrinking grotesquely but kept alive so their flesh remains fresh- is a vision of Hell right out of Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. Calling themselves "the good guys," the father and son still carry a gun- with two bullets- to end their lives if needed rather than suffer a crueler fate. The father also struggles with the ethical dilemma of having to "unteach" his son about compassion and empathy, afraid that the boy- who wants to help those equally in need- will only die in the attempt. This "every man for himself" situation is in stark contrast to everything the father believes, and how the boy has been raised. It's this struggle to hang on to the noble aspects of humanity while surrounded by the worse that makes the novel insightful, haunting, and a riveting read.

Mark Wakely, author of An Audience for Einstein

32 out of 36 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 11/12/06

'What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.'

Cormac McCarthy has a way with words. His sentences are fragments, his punctuation is minimal. His placement of conversation on a page is as spare as the feelings that initiate it and it is offered without character identification or quotation marks. He has a gift for making landscapes visual, for describing events in the most succinct way that it is only after passing over a paragraph that the thunder strikes. Cormac McCarthy is a powerful writer.

THE ROAD is a bleak novel, one that after a few pages becomes frightening, challenging, and so ugly that the reader is tempted to stop the journey. But proceeding on with reading this work places the persistent reader in a trance-like state, wondering how such a tale will resolve. And in so many ways it doesn't end, leaving us with only inward uneasy feelings that this apocalyptic story may be all too near.

A man and his son walk through the 241 pages of this novel in a world gone wrong. Though we are never told the etiology of the destruction of the planet's surface by fire (this is McCarthy we are reading!), there is nothing left but burnt houses, corpses, barren trees, and ash - ash that penetrates everything including the lungs of our two characters but also the sea, the sky, the ground, the air, and the mood. The 'story' is the struggle to keep walking the face of the earth, always headed south where it sill be warmer, searching for means of survival. The man and his son grow even more strong as there physical stamina collapses and the degree of love and acceptance of the way things are bonds them inextricably. They occasionally encounter other live humans ('good guys' or 'bad guys') who represent challenges for the meager food supply for sustenance. As with all of McCarthy's novels we learn much about these two characters by the end of the story, not so much from shared history as just existential survival. 'Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.'

For some the novel may be just too dark to read and that is certainly understandable given the various cycles of life in which we all travel. But the ultimate result of finishing McCarthy's view of the end of the world has a strangely odd sense of hope. That is part of the author's ability to create a work that will be lasting. For this reader THE ROAD is jarringly indelible. Grady Harp, November 06

28 out of 36 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 10/14/06

"Are We Still The Good Guys?"

'Concurrent with keeping his son alive is the more metaphysical challenge of sustaining his son's innate goodness while forcing him to witness the corruption of all moral behavior. "Are we still the good guys?" the boy asks in moments of confusion and shock. His father insists they are. "This is what good guys do," he tells him. "They keep trying. They don't give up." Why, then, his son asks, won't he help the stragglers they run across instead of running from them or shooting at them? "We should go to him, Papa. We could get him and take him with us. . . . I'd give that little boy half of my food." How to explain the necessity of abandoning others to certain death (or worse, in one particularly terrifying scene) while maintaining that they're "the good guys," the ones "carrying the fire"? Washington Post

Cormac Mccarthy has given us a glimpse of a world none of us want to see or visit, but we are there. It is desolate, singulatory, stark, bleak; all of these words and more are needed to describe a world after a nuclear explosion. We are left to imagine the events, the place, and the time. All we have are these two souls, dad and son, no names. They are moving from one place to another to get to the coast, why, we do not know, are left to wonder. Along the way Mccarthy describes the world we never want to see. Smoldering even after a few years, everything black and stripped of any semblance. Not many people, and those they meet, they are afraid of. Looters, and murderers and eaters of flesh. These two souls, father and son, the two evidences that love can keep you going, can keep you on the right path, and can keep you "One of the good guys". There is not much to keep you going or to keep you safe. Death, no food, no shelter, no clothing, harsh and cold environment, only your wits, and then it is hard to keep them together. A harsh and cold path and if it is what we have to face, Cormac Mccarthy has given us the most beautiful prose and surreal writing.

This is a book to be read by everyone. This is a book to be remembered, to be revered and to be kept in the recesses of our brains, to come out only when necessary. This book begs to be discussed. So many nuances, so many allegories, and so many scenes that are reminiscent, but still new.

"He knew only that the child was his warrant," it says of the father and his mission. "He said: if he is not the word of God, God never spoke." The love of a father and his son, the greatest love of all.
Highly, highly recommended. prisrob 10-14-06

21 out of 29 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 3/29/07

Destined to become a literary classic

In a post-apocalyptic landscape where ashen clouds block out the sun, and almost all plant and animal life are extinct a man and his son walk. They walk down a road. A road they hope will lead them to a better life. Their goal is to follow the road to the ocean. The man believes that there might still be civilized life there. It is the only hope they still cling too in the world gone mad. They are almost out of food and fresh water and along the way they will have to fight the bitter cold, Storms of ash and dust, and roaming bands of cannibals that show no mercy to those they capture. The man is determined to protect his son from the savages of this doomed world, and he will stop at nothing to make sure him and his son reach their destination. They are on The Road. The road that will either lead to their salvation, or destruction.

Ever so often a story comes around that redefines a genre. A story that is destined to become an Literary Classic, and The Road in my opinion is one of those stories. I had seen all the rave reviews this story was getting so I new that I was was in for a treat, but I had no idea that I would enjoy this book as much as I did. I was completely consumed in the grim, bleak world Mr. McCarthy created. I had never read any of Mr. McCarthy's work before so I wasn't sure what to expect when I started this story. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that The Road is one of the most dark, yet beautiful stories I have ever read. I could not put this book down. I finished it in two nights and when I was done I found myself wanting to start it all over again. This story stayed with me weeks after I finished it. There have only been a few books I've read that literally made me cry, and The Road is one of them. It is hard to put into words how good this book really is. I can say that reading The Road was an experience that I will never forget for as I long as I live. I am a McCarthy fan now and I will make sure to read the rest of his work. I have a feeling that I will enjoy them too. Mr. McCarthy is one heck of a storyteller.

The road is destined to go down as one of the greatest stories of fiction written in this decade. It is head and shoulders above just about anything else on the fiction market today. Go and get a copy and see for yourself. I can promise that you wont be sorry.

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