The Road / Cormac McCarthy

The Road

(category: science fiction)
by

Cormac McCarthy

published by Random House in 2006, read in February 2010

Agamedes' rating: 4 out of 10

Agamedes' opinion:

I think that the final paragraph of this book indicates something mystical. It's hard to be sure since it has no link to the rest of the book. I know that it is the most miserable book that I have read for a very long time. Half way through and I couldn't sleep for the awful images that the book had put into my mind. (If the only measure of a book were impact, this book is well-written.) The traditional end of this type of post-apocalyptic book is to find the small pocket of embattled but surviving civilisation on the horizon. (The Chrysalids, for example.) In The road, the father dies -- no great surprise -- and the boy is taken in by a small family. But so what? With what we have been shown of the world -- how will that small family survive? From all that we have been shown of the world, the only survival strategy is cannibalism... and with no other sources of food, even cannibalism has limited potential. So it's a miserable book with an ending which has only delayed the miserable inevitable. Think of reading Playboy to help with a sperm donation; this is equivalent reading for the suicidal.

Feeling suicidal? Need help to keep in the mood? Follow the link, buy the book and know that at least one person will benefit, when I get the sales commission.