Wednesday 10 October 2012

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Publisher: Picador
Published: 26th September 2006
Pages: 307
Synopsis:
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

Review:
First off, this review is going to be short, as I have to write about this for a university assignment and apparently, it would be self-plagiarism if I wrote the same stuff!

It took me a while to get into this - the writing style is interesting to say the least! Minimal punctuation and sometimes complex description makes for a seemingly long read! Well, I say complex; what I really mean is the random word that I had to look up in a dictionary and still, McCarthy not giving anything away about location or names or anything!

The relationship between unnamed father and son was both tender and tense - the little boy is so naive and that annoys his father but he still does his best to look after the little one. Yet their love is obvious: it drives them both forward, having to look after the other against the bad guys and towards survival.

Finally, the ending was heart-wrenching. Surprising as I did not empathise with this characters - by that, I mean I felt for them but I didn't identity with them. Yet I did get a little choked up with the sad ending of their journey.

1 comment:

  1. This book broke me it was so sad... and freaky. I really loved the relationship portrayed between father and son!

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