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The Road by Cormac McCarthy
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The Road

by Cormac McCarthy

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations
11,66964181 (4.16)464

Member recommendations

  1. macktan894 recommends The Children of Men by P. D. James
  2. JD456 recommends The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
  3. bdav1818 recommends In A Perfect World by Laura Kasischke
  4. lmichet recommends The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard
  5. klarusu recommends Far North by Marcel Theroux, "Far North is less harrowing than The Road but equally thought provoking"
  6. psybre recommends Earth Abides by George R. Stewart, "Earth Abides, a classic post-apocalyptic novel published in 1949, is a bit less dark, and as an ecological fable, contains more science than The Road. (see more) When pondering to read The Road again, read this book instead."
  7. Boohradley recommends Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, "There are a lot of similarities between the plot of this book and The Road. In Parable of the Sower an adolescent girl, who suffers from hyper-empathy, (see more) makes a long journey in hope of survival in a hostile, post-apocalyptic world."
  8. PDcastello recommends I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, "Same type of small and silent epic"
  9. Stbalbach recommends The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski, "Kosinski & McCarthy were born 5 weeks apart in 1933 and were ages 6-12 during WWII. Both books are dark violent fables told from a child's view."
  10. dhoyt recommends A Wrinkle in the Skin by John Christopher, "A much better father and son story in a post-apocalyptic world."

(see all 15 recommendations)

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English (612)  Spanish (8)  French (7)  Danish (3)  Dutch (2)  Swedish (2)  Italian (2)  Catalan (2)  German (1)  Czech (1)  Norwegian (1)  All languages (641)
Showing 1-5 of 612 (next | show all)
Personally I disliked this book. I was glad once I had finished it and I shall not read it again.
It has polarised our book club to either love or hate.
Its well written but I found it a real drag.
I didnt connect with the boy or his father and I found mysefl disinterested to whether they survived or not.
The story is of a father and son in a post apocalyptic world where order has dissolved. The are on the road to reach the sea where the father believes that the world will be better.
I guess the book is meant to be a look at relationships when all is in despair (which is how I felt reading it). ( )
  lorraineh | Dec 6, 2009 |
In 2006, Cormac McCarthy pulped a book about the end times. However you want to label it and say how this comes to be, he leaves that to you, but what he spins on the pages is a story of suspense, survival, and of finding hope in a place void of it.

The Road's two characters are a son and a father. The father is attempting to survive any way he can, and he never lets the son lose hope.

The Road follows suit with other McCarthy works with minimal punctuation and without proper names. The characters have no names, much like the Clint Eastwood character in the 70's. But this doesn't make them any less real or tangible. At the end of the novel, you feel like you have walked through the apocalypse with them.

This is not a horror book, but it does have some horrific scenes in it. I think what works the best, with horror, is when it is a subtle thing. One scene, in The Road, the two characters come across something terrible. This terribleness is not described in graphic detail, but the reader is given just enough to realize what is happening, and to realize the peril that the two protagonists are in. This is a good lesson to us writers: sometimes the imagination can scare a person better than any printed word.

The Road is a quick read. It's not long and it isn't supposed to be. Everything that is in it is for a purpose, and there is no filler. At no point, in reading The Road, do you think: we're just wasting time here. Every second is stacked with story, and every page filled with what it totally and completely necessary.

There's a reason why Cormac McCarthy is considered one of the best author's of this generation. His story weaving is something to breathe in deeply. The Road is a great start if you haven't read McCarthy before. ( )
  jjtyler | Dec 4, 2009 |
I finished 'Suttree' in the morning and then read 'The Road' in three hours. A wonderful book. ( )
  lanewilkinson | Dec 4, 2009 |
An excellent novel about a man and his son in a post-apocalyptic world trying to survive as they journey south to what they hope is a warmer climate. The horrors, challenges and suffering they endure is described in stark, concise language, evocative of the world in which they are living. And yet this dark, dismal, horrific story is uplifted by the loving relationship of parent and child.

An amazing story that I will carry with me for a long time.
2 vote katylit | Nov 30, 2009 |
Strange, disturbing yet reassuring - good will triumph no matter what is faced! ( )
  wungu | Nov 29, 2009 |
Showing 1-5 of 612 (next | show all)
“The Road” is a dynamic tale, offered in the often exalted prose that is McCarthy’s signature, but this time in restrained doses — short, vivid sentences, episodes only a few paragraphs or a few lines long, which is yet another departure for him.
 
Post-apocalyptic fiction isn't automatically better when written by Cormac McCarthy, but he does have a way of investing genre clichés with fine gray tones and morose poetry.
added by eereed | editA.V. Club, Noel Murray (Oct 5, 2006)
 
“The Road” offers nothing in the way of escape or comfort. But its fearless wisdom is more indelible than reassurance could ever be.
 
Through his scaled-down view of a post-apocalypse American east, McCarthy has discovered a rich, engrossing landscape that is distinctly his own. It’s a horrible pleasure to watch the father and his son make their way through it, even as one remains unsure whether it would be more humane to hope for their survival or hope for their gentle death.
 
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Important events
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Epigraph
Dedication
This book is dedicated to John Francis McCarthy
First words
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him.
Quotations
He'd not have thought the value of the smallest thing predicated on a world to come. It surprised him. That the space which these things occupied was itself an expectation (149).
From daydreams on the road there was no waking. He plodded on. He could remember everything of her save her scent. Seated in a theatre with her beside him leaning forward listening to the music. Gold scrollwork and sconces and the tall columnar folds of the drapes at either side of the stage. She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the tops of her stockings through the thin stuff of her summer dress. Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned.
He pulled the boy closer. Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.

You forget some things, don't you?

Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.
It took two days to cross that ashen scabland. The road beyond fell away on every side. It's snowing, the boy said. He looked at the sky. A single gray flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom.
He thought if he lived long enough the world at last would be lost. Like the dying world the newly blind inhabit, all of it slowly fading from memory.
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Disambiguation notice
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Wikipedia in English (2)

Cormac McCarthy

The Road

Book description
The Road follows a man and a boy, father and son, journeying together for many months across a desolate, post-apocalyptic landscape, some years – the period of time almost the same as the age of the boy – after a great, unexplained cataclysm.

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