Book Review: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road

By Cormac McCarthy

A father and son, neither of them named, travel south across a scorched and empty landscape that was once America. McCarthy's post-apocalyptic setting is a dying world seemingly devoid of hope. The story takes place ten years after an unspecified and almost entirely unexplained event brought a fiery end to civilization. 

Only two brief flashback scenes take the reader back to the moment of destruction, which might have been a nuclear war, or possibly a series of meteor strikes, or something else entirely. There were explosions, the power went out, and everything began to burn. That's all the explanation that McCarthy is interested in giving, and in a story that is largely metaphorical, the details of how it all happened are not entirely necessary. 

Interestingly, though, McCarthy chooses to focus on meticulous levels of detail when it comes to survival in the post-apocalyptic world. The father's survival skills, as well as his every mistake, are brought to light through copious detail of every useful remnant scavenged and every precaution taken. 

The Road paints a bleak picture of humanity as well. Father and son push a grocery cart along the road with a scavenged motorcycle mirror clamped to the cart to watch their backs, and a pistol with only a couple of bullets remaining at the ready. Father assures son that they are "the good guys" in a world where people have turned to cannibalism and rape as a way of life. 

McCarthy writes in a format that is as relentless as the harsh world he has envisioned. No chapters to break up the narrative, and no quotations around the dialogue. 

Interestingly, the dialogue between father and son, while understated, is one of the strongest aspects of this book. McCarthy has a way of conveying what is left unsaid through the simple communication, much as he is able to address questions of life, death, and hope in his descriptions of moment-to-moment details. 

This is a good book on multiple levels, and definitely worth a read whether or not you are normally into post-apocalyptic SF.

The Road was book #1 in my goal of reading 50 books in 2009.