Rated of 5
by Cooper Conrad The Road Review
The Road is a compelling book with a great plot theme and story line is memorable.
Rated of 5
by TL 'The Road' Review
‘The Road’ is one of the most twisted and beautiful books I have ever read. Each paragraph is written in an almost poetic style. McCarthy writes: “All the day they traveled through the drifting haze of woodsmoke. In the draws the smoke coming off the ground like mist and the thin black trees burning on the slopes like stands of heathen candles.” This vivid description can give almost anyone the chills, and each paragraph is written with details such as this. ‘The Road’ is a must read on all accounts.
Rated of 5
by Shana Bodies in Basements: It's the End of the World as We Know It
With a touching story of a father and son struggling to remain whole in a broken world, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road displays an excellent assembly of powerful imagery and a classic flickering hope for a brighter future. While this experimental, post-apocalyptic novel describes a dark Earth and its merciless inhabitants, McCarthy puts an intense emphasis on what little hope the world continues to possess in the form of a boy, born after the end of civilized society, who “carries the fire” and inspires others to do the same.
Faced with vicious cannibals, ruthless thieves, and the occasional straggler not so different from themselves, the father and son journey south along “The Road” in hopes to reach a warmer climate before the cold and deadly winter sweeps over them. Food is scarce, shelter is rare, and potential dangers lurk around every corner. Although suicide is a tempting option, they continue through the ash and snow to survive, refusing to surrender although the world has already abandoned them. Any science fiction reader with an interest in opening basement doors to find a pantry of food in the form of still-breathing human beings and a preference for a bittersweet ending will definitely possess a fondness for this novel.
While particularly exploring the collapse of society and the breakdown of social standards, the main description of the story is spun in an intricate web of sentence fragments depicting mostly the landscape and the psychological stresses on the main characters’ minds; although do not confuse McCarthy’s lack of proper sentence structure and his frequently confusing refusal to include quotation marks and other indications of “who-spoke-when’s” with a case of ignoring the accepted grammatical rules for the simple reason of “I just can.” Bold experimentation with style and form of writing is one of the many Modern characteristics that The Road possesses, a poetic quality few can achieve with such finesse and elegance as McCarthy. The novel remains something of an “easy read,” written in a straightforward fashion, a relief from the numerous novels that are frequently undermined by their over stylized and flowery descriptions.
The Road definitely goes on the top shelf of my bookcase with the rest of my favorites. It’s heart-wrenching, curious, and invigorating – leaving the interpretation for what ended the modern world completely up to my own bit of imagination, a trait I can easily admire. McCarthy’s granted the rare coupling of wanting more while at the same time feeling completely satisfied with its ending. A perfect candidate for a rainy day, once you start down The Road, there’s no turning back.
Rated of 5
by Mason Book Review for the Best Book Ever
The one time I went camping, it was only for one night, and we had plenty of supplies. The book The Road throws you right into a world of darkness and devastation where every minute you have to struggle to live. Cormac McCarthy uses extreme description to make you feel as if you are in a post apocalyptic world. The openness and loose ends make it all the more real. Not only was it an interesting journey through a scorched landscape it was a very easy book to read.
The book follows a father and his son through some of the harshest conditions imaginable. You can feel yourself take their place from having a vivid picture of what is going on around the two people implanted into your head. They passed a metal trash dump where someone had once tried to burn bodies. The charred meat and bones under the damp ash might have been anonymous save for the skulls. No longer any smell. The description of every situation makes it impossible not to picture what is going on to the father and the son. Almost all of the lines in this masterpiece are perfectly composed to give you something for every sense. The most interesting thing about The Road is the way it is written. This is my favorite part about it. The openness that this book has lets you plug in whatever you so choose to. The only things it gives you to link to what happened before the book is all of the flashbacks. They are littered throughout the book. Not once in those flashbacks however does it mention anything about the father or boy from before the beginning of the book. Cormac McCarthy didn't even name anyone. Not one sentence gives any insight to what happened to the world. McCarthy left all this open for you to interpret it for yourself. Put in whatever you want and you get your own version of the story.
Reading The Road was extremely easy. This is a really good thing about this book. The print is big and paragraphs are spread out a lot. Pages fly by very quickly. The language is really easy to understand too. Each page and each paragraph and each word flows perfectly together and makes it almost impossible to put the book down for an extended period of time. The lack of chapters also makes it so that you can't stop reading because you can't just read to the next chapter. The only hard thing is that conversations are confusing to follow because there are no names and it doesn't say who is talking.
The only way to understand why this future classic is going to be considered a classic sometime in the future and why it won the Pulitzer Prize you have to read it. Go get this book and enjoy this journey of father and son and see how they go through ups and downs and love and hate they can strive and keep pushing through a world that has been completely burnt to a crisp.
Rated of 5
by Hawk The Road Review
It's the end of the world as we know it, in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. McCarthy gives you the ability to make the book your own in his writings. He also gives a strong loving bond between the father and the son. McCarthy does all this while keeping this book a fairly simple read. This book could easily be a classic one day; it is that amazing.
The Road is a quest/survival book. It is about the journey of a father and a son to the south to escape the winter and hopes of survival in the post-apocalyptic world. Along the way, the bond of love between to the two is put to the test in this harsh, cold world that they are forced to survive in. The Road that they travel is symbolic and literal at the exact same time. The Road they travel on is symbolic for a journey of the growing of the child to be an adult and the father's road to the end of his life slowly day by day. The Road is literal because they are traveling on the road to escape the winter in the south.
This is one of the greatest books I have read in a long time. Personally, I think it has the qualities to one day become a classic book. The book could be one day considered a classic because of many reasons. McCarthy's unique style of writing, and his ability to let you fill the roles of the characters, and making the characters personal to you as the reader. And, McCarthy's descriptions of the areas and scenes depicted in the book the road, which are very vivid, dark, and desolate. And, McCarthy's ending also adds to the quality of the book because it is something you will never expect and may think about for a while. The Road shows many themes but two follow through-out the entire book. No matter where the boy and his father go, death is always close and creeping closer and closer to them as the winter approaches them. Nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. (pg.173) Darkness is another reoccurring theme. The dark is like a barrier to the boy and his father always consuming them. The blackness he woke to on those nights was sightless and impenetrable. A blackness to hurt your ears with listening.(pg.15) Nights beyond darkness.
The Road is a fairly simple book to read. McCarthys writing paints a very good picture of this dying world. The dialogue can be tough to figure out at times because no names are given and no quote marks are used. So you have to pay very good attention when the characters are talking. So, times you may have to go back and reread, but its worth it. And, McCarthy often throws in a trouble word, but this makes the book all the more fun to read and helps give a feeling for what he is talking about.Love is an amazing thing. It can create such a strong bond especially between a father and a son that one would go through all odds to see the other survive. The Road's basis is the love for the son from the father and his will to survive. Once you pick up this book you wont want to put it down till you're done.
Rated of 5
by Barb Gee A Bleak but Buautiful Book
This is a compelling novel - hardly surprising given its prize winning status. It is both bleak (VERY bleak) and beautiful, the story of the love between a father and son who are on a journey of survival (the Road of the title) in a post apocalyptic world. We are left to draw our own conclusions about the cause of the apocalypse, this is an existential piece in which cause and history is irrelevant, nothing that was, is any longer, other than the few survivors - and they are not what they once were. The father and son, however, hold onto a remnant of hope - "the fire". Through his profound talent with words, McCarthy takes us on the journey with the two protagonists,in language that like the landscape,is sparse but overwhelming in its descriptive power. It is ultimately a triumph of the power of a father's love and a little boy's trust that somewhere, in some of the few of the world's survivors, there is still good to be found in the prevailing horror and evil that is the struggle to survive. Or indeed, is the triumph that humanity itself survives in a world that is post civilization as we know it? A book of many layers. More than, "Very Good", this book is a masterpiece.
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