The Road

Since Kyle’s first book review was based on a book which has recently been released as a movie, I figured I would start with a book soon to be a movie. Pulitzer Prize winning “The Road”, by Cormac McCarthy, may be his darkest book yet, as well as one of his best. This book gives you everything you need to appreciate the story and nothing more. You will not hear the names of the characters in this book, because that doesn’t matter. You will want details about how and why, but you will not receive them. Cormac cuts through the bullshit and gives us a story of survival, trust, friendship, and growing up. “The Road” is based in, from what I can tell, the not so far off future. In this future everything has gone awry. Civilization as we know it has been replaced by ash and corpses. Canned food only lasted so long for the survivors and now cannibals lurk around every corner. The story follows a man and his son trying to get by in this world, or what’s left of it. They must trust each other and no one else to survive.
This is the 4th Cormac McCarthy novel I have read and I can definitely say he is consistent. The man’s skill at describing outdoor surroundings is to be envied. He could describe a thousand thunderstorms and never once sound repetitive. Normally his books have surroundings which reflect the real world but this novel gives him a chance to show us something we could have never imagined. Though a world covered in ash seems far-out he makes you feel like you're there. I would definitely recommend this book, especially prior to the movie being released. The movie is to be released sometime in 2009 and will be staring Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Viggo Mortenson (should have been Christian Bale), and Guy Pearce (was awesome in “Memento”).

-J

THE ROAD is an amazingly dark, depressing, and gloomy novel. But a story so endearing and utterly descriptive you can't put it down. There's no way I could accurately describe to someone the images of the world McCarty painted in my mind. But, if anything, I think we could all learn a little bit about trust and loyalty from The Road.


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