Brilliant and endearing and ultimately uplifting., September 26, 2006

Reviewer:

Richard L. Pangburn (Bardstown, KY USA) - See all my reviews

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.

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"This is the way the world ends...", September 26, 2006

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.



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Reviewer:

KAB (Columbus, OH) - See all my reviews

I truly enjoyed this novel "The Road." It was so easy to connect with the man and his son and to follow their lives with them as they journey their way down the sea while desperately trying to survive. An excellent read and I highly recommend it. Cormac McCarthy's writing style just flowed and his descriptions of the people and places just filled my mind with the incentive to know more. I just couldn't put the book down!

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This is the novel Cormac McCarthy's been preparing us for for more than 40 years now. Though I certainly hope it's not his last novel, it's difficult to read "The Road" without thinking of it as a coda to his career.

"The Road" reads like vintage McCarthy--stark visions of human depravity, gnostic imagery, prose that sounds like it was torn from the pages of the Bible and delivered from on high. His portrait of a post-apocalyptic world--one where ash falls like a steady rain, cannibals prowl the countryside, and the scorched earth offers nothing in the way of comfort or hope to its remaining occupants--is unremittingly bleak; and yet the tender bond between the nameless father and son offers a glimmer of hope. (Indeed, it's ironic that a novel about the end of the world is one of McCarthy's tenderest.) The book can be read as a cautionary tale, an allegory, or a horror yarn. It's McCarthy's gift as a writer that the book can be enjoyed on any and all of these levels. It can also be enjoyed for the sheer power of its prose, which is some of his very best since "Blood Meridian" was published two decades ago.

"The Road" deserves (and will undoubtedly garner) a wide readership; hopefully, it will lead many to rediscover McCarthy's earlier work. This book is further evidence as to why he is America's greatest living writer.

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Reviewer:

C. Myers "leanleaper" (Simi Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews

The Road is a classic quest motif woven into a post-apocalyptic parable set in a wasteland remnant of the United States following a world-wide catastrophe. The exact nature of the fall of humanity is never directly stated, but there are enough narrative hints to suggest that it is a result of human folly. Part of the power of this novel is that it forgoes elaborate explanations of how the world came to this pass and, instead, focuses on the results of the calamity and the survivors' responses to their horribly altered lives.

The results--a wasteland of ash and corpses and dead vegetation; a world without sun or stars; a wintry hell of everpresent cold; a landscape in shades of gray and black over which range gangs of cannibals. As with all McCarthy novels, he presents readers with the disturbing thesis that social man falls into depravity all too easily, quickly deserting those values which separate him from beasts. This is juxtaposed by those few individuals in whom admirable values survive and who have the strength of character to survive by opposing the evils of others by remaining true to those values.

This is a 21st century Heart of Darkness with a horror that is infinitely more palpable to the reader than Conrad's because it transcends the depravity of a single madman. On the other hand, as is the case with so many of the best quest tales, the redemptive power is that of love. The agonizing journey of the father and son "carrying the fire" along the road toward an uncertain future, and the sacrifices each makes for the other, are what make this novel unforgettable, heart-wrenching, and beautiful.

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tremendous allegorical futuristic thriller , September 30, 2006

Reviewer:

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews

The cities and much of the woodland have vanished in a pandemic inferno; the birds no longer fly as they all died in the catastrophe. Nothing seems to live in the oceans. Left behind is a world with few living species struggling to survive under a grey cover of ash that engulfs the planet.

A man and his son trek down the lonely road using a shopping cart to carry their possessions as they search for food to stave off starvation. The elder is armed, but running out of ammo. He vows to not allow his offspring to be captured even if it means using his last two bullets on himself and his son. He fears the cannibals who would see them as choice cut and trusts no one including seemingly harmless other survivors. He insists to his child that they are good people doing what they must as he does what it takes to keep them safe. The lad learns only the strong survive and begins to wonders if staying alive is enough as he now comprehends why his mother committed suicide just after he was born.

THE ROAD is a tremendous allegorical futuristic thriller that has current ramifications. The nameless travelers are an interesting pairing as the father does preemptive strikes on others rationalizing it as protecting his son based on in some incidents no evidence only a presumptive belief that everyone is the enemy. The son learns the Golden Rule lesson well of killing others before they do unto you as survival is everything in this grim haunting parable.

Harriet Klausner


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