The Road

a fast and poignant yet digestible read, succinct if you will. post-apocalyptic without being too bleak. don't get me wrong, its dark in every which way, but not devastating. well worth the read - highly recommend it.

One of the finest novels, of any genre I've ever read. A standout a literary fiction, or as speculative fiction. A victory of speculative fiction, in that it is by a literary author, and published as such.
McCarthy uses the unsaid, or the simple turns of language, the way a fine sketch artist uses negative space. Perhaps his most subtle work. The Road is an unflinching examination of the forces in human lives, stripped bare by a tortured world and bleak future. It is also an unflinching examination of love, and its power in the face of struggle.
In many ways the Road says what McCarthy has been trying to say in all his previous novels, in the clear, quiet, and devastating way with which an old and battle scarred man speaks of war. It is a masterpiece of the unsaid.

Very unusual but extremely recommended.

Throw in some nudity, some death, some cannibalism and voila a movie deal. The last few pages were pathetic.

I read this the week my daughter was born, which may have been a mistake. It's about the love between a father and son despite the bleakest possible circumstances. Not for the faint of heart, but one of the most poignant books you'll read.

Vila shared this book with me and it has not left me yet. I think of this book often, it is haunting how it stays with you and how I feel that this book, this story, is too close to reality, a step away from the fringe that we live in, a possibility that is frightening. But it is also the love that stays with me, the love of a man for his son and the hope that he has and that he puts into everything he does.

This book brought about one of my favorite personal existential crises. Still, McCarthy manages to makes the case for goodness, even while showing us the threshold of the abyss.

This is a dark, dark book.

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Cormac McCarthy's mesmeric prose is certainly wonderfully evocative of the post-apocalyptic desolation and creates a most poignant relationship between the man and the boy as they desperately struggle to hold on both to life and meaning. The moments of horror when they come are indeed shocking but also tempered by that all-encompassing sense of desolation. Indeed it is perhaps this book's greatest success that is also its flaw. As a poignant evocation the extremes of good and evil in us and the efforts we make to keep going it is beautifully done, though as a story it is perhaps not quite as satisfying or strikingly memorable as it perhaps could be. The question remains even with the faint glimmers of hope at the end, if we are carrying the fire then what are we actually carrying it for? That not entirely answered question is where this books is most insightful and intelligent, but also at, as a story, it doesn't quite entirely satisfy perfectly.