Review: The Road

For anyone who has seen No Country for Old Men, you have been introduced to the brutal style of Cormac McCarthy. He's written several works of fiction, many of which are set on the US/Mexico border and in the lawlessness of frontier life of that area.

I've heard good things about McCarthy and so, a couple weeks ago, I bought a paperback copy of The Road, published in 2006 to rave reviews. It was made into a movie starring Viggo Mortensen and released this past November. I didn't hear of it, and I don't think it got much run. It looks pretty good, though.

I began reading the book (almost 300 pages) last Wednesday. I finished Friday night. It was a quick read, but it was also that good.

McCarthy uses sparse punctuation -- no quotation marks, no apostrophes and very few commas, extra space between paragraphs, and no chapter breaks to create a book that reflects its content: a bleak, monotonous world destroyed by some unknown apocalypse. A layer of ash covers everything: dead trees, dead grass, deserted towns and buildings, even rivers, and especially the road.

On this road, a man and his young son wander this depressing landscape, scavenging out an existence. They wear homemade cloth masks to save their lungs from the ash. They carry only a few things: a gun with a couple bullets, their clothes, and whatever they can fit inside an old grocery cart: food, clothes, tools, and a few small toys for the boy (his age is never given, though he must be around 6-8 years old). They are headed for the coast, though they don't know what awaits them there.

Making their journey more complicated are the roving bands of survivors who have devolved into a barbaric, tribal way of life. For our man and his boy, to be caught by anyone else would mean either death or a horrible existence.

Since nothing grows, food must be scavenged. As a result, nearly everyone else they come across has turned to cannibalism. The world has become a savage place.

Yet our man and his boy represent redemption. Several times, they mention to each other that they "carry the fire." We learn that the man is intelligent and honorable. He cannot bring himself to quit: he lives on, and he does everything and anything he can to make sure his son lives. Their love and struggle to continue give us hope.

Given such a bleak, hopeless world, McCarthy does a wonderful job concluding the book. I really enjoyed it. I only wish it was longer. I look forward to seeing the movie, and hopefully reading some of McCarthy's other work.