Book: Cormac McCarthy, 'The Road'

Jesus God, what a book. The blurb on the back cover says it is destined to become known as McCarthy's masterpiece, and I have to agree. I read 'All the Pretty Horses' when it came out but haven't read any McCarthy since. I knew he wrote spare, haunting, brutal books, but even knowing that I wasn't prepared for 'The Road.'

This is a brilliant novel, possibly one of the best I've ever read. It tells the story of a nameless father and son, trying to survive in the aftermath of what I assume is a nuclear holocaust. The two spend the book on the verge of death, one mistake away from fading away like, the reader assumes, just about everyone else in the world. As they scramble for food and shelter and try to avoid roving gangs of cannibals, the father reflects on life both before and after the conflagration, and what it means to live in a world where none of the trappings of civilization or culture exist anymore.

The writing is spare and the dialect McCarthy writes in echoes both the Old West and the Old Testament. But what I thought at first was a sort of forced was simplicity turned out to feel more like the narrator's failed attempts to describe the world around him. When the modern world has ceased to exit, it may be that modern language is no longer adequate or necessary. There are, after all, only so many ways to say that the entire world -- sky, land, and water -- is gray, there are no animals besides a handful of humans, and looking beyond tomorrow is folly.

I'm pretty tough when it comes to reading. Violence and gore don't bother me (the last two fiction books I read before this one were Scott Smith's 'The Ruins' and Don Winslow's 'Power Of The Dog') but I almost couldn't finish this book -- I was reading it before bed every night and had to stop for a while and then read the last 100 pages in one burst so I could process and start getting it out of my head. Not because it's particularly violent or gory, but because McCarthy does such an amzaing job of describing a situation void of hope. This is not the apocalyptic punk of George Miller's 'Mad Max' or the fantastic post-eco-collapse of Miyazaki's 'Nausicaä.' This is a world where people survive by killing human babies, gutting them, roasting them on a spit, and eating them. It makes 'Huis Clos' feel like Club Med. It left me feeling hopeless, helpless, and crushed.

It's also, as I mentioned, brilliant. It has instantly found its way to the top of a list of "loved it but never want to see/read it again" movies and books, neslted squarely between 'A Simple Plan' and Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books. Go get it, read it, and revel in McCarthy's virtuosity. But don't say I didn't warn you.