The Road (Oprah's Book Club)

Reading this novel, I could not help but put myself and my son in the story and imagine what it would be like to experience what the characters where going through. This book was all at the same time depressing, and uplifting. It made me both smile and cringe at times. Each page was filled with tension and energy. McCarthy puts enough description into the story to make you feel the cold of this post-apocolyptic world, feel its desolation. It is not a long novel (287 pages, MMPB), but I literally read it in hours.

First and foremost, this story is about the love between a father and son in the face of the toughest circumstances. I urge you to read this book. This is a good novel, not to be categorized into any genre, including disaster/apocalypse books. Try this one, you will be truly moved.

If you're looking for a novel in the post-apocalyptic genre and nothing more, move on. This is not The Stand. It isn't Lucifer's Hammer. You'll find only very sparse backstory here, and no insight into whatever apocalyptic chain of events rendered the world an ashen wastelend. The Road is told from the ground - it's not an epic, not a plotical "what if" gimmick, and it's not an action story. Nor does it bear an intricately woven plot in the traditional sense - at least not in the sense modern readers have apparently become accutomed to. The dialogue is simple and to the point and the pacing is relatively berefit of breakneck twists. If all this sounds condescending, I'm sorry, but it's primarily a response to the recent crop of reviewers who've been drawn to the book by the news that it's slated to be adapted for a 2009 movie deal, or through Oprah's book club, and have missed the point in a really astronomical way.

What is The Road? It's brillaint. Beautiful, in a really excuricating way, and at times, yes, terrifyingly bleak. I burned through this in one long night - the first time I've done that in several years. Simply put, this isn't a book about plot (although you'll find yourself biting your nails every step of the way), it isn't about a post-apocalyptic world (although the wasteland McCarthy gives us is chilling, perhaps the most chiling, stark "post-apocalyptic" setting ever put to paper) - it's about a father and a son dragging eachother through hell. Seldom is it that a piece of fiction captures such a nakedly honest, intensely real portrayal of a father-son relationship, down to its absolute marrow, one only made more moving by the horror and the gray that surrounds it. It is an incredible experience and far too intense to fit into a little black genre box. Those looking for zombies and big explosions should look elsewhere.

If you want to know anything about this book, well, there are plenty of reviews with all sorts of detailed spoilers etc.

My takeaway was be prepared.

What you treasure most in the entire world, no, not your own life, but the life of your children may someday depend on it.

Generations pass by and nothing bad happens. But then you find yourself among the unlucky saps who has to deal with something much worse than Katrina...I don't know about you, but I'd rather have a little extra stuff stashed in the basement that I NEVER use, than to actually desperatly want for some small item like a bullet and not have it...watching my loved one die because I had to have a twinkie or some other worthless item instead...

Do you have a few books that matter? Have you spent your idle time learning about firearms and metal and wood and how things work in this modern world of ours? You don't need to be a "mcgyver" but you at least owe it to your loved ones to have a basic understanding of the world around you.....

I have friends who can hardly change a light bulb. They would be doomed. Seriously, do you want to live your life at the mercy of those more powerful or just more knowledgeable than you? Sam Colt gave us the equalizer long ago. Learn how various weapons work and how to keep them working.

But, why do I even bother... if you are a "planner" I hardly doubt my little rant will put you over the edge and get you actually planning for a "just in case" situation. You already have taken some steps. I hope you take more. Make sure you have a few hundred gallons of water. Make sure you have a few months worth of easily stored food (like beans, rice, lentils, flour etc...) that you can use and replenish so it never goes to waste.... Make sure you can never, ever, be without ammunition. If you need it, I promise you, nobody will be there to help you but you! Could you heat your food if the power was out for a month?

But, for the majority, just keep doing what you have been doing. Prepare for nothing. Don't worry, the benevolent government will never become like all the other great empires and they will always protect you just like New Orleans. I promise you, just when you need the government the most it will disarm you and leave you helpless. Just ask the poor folks who elected to stay in New Orleans...wow what awful stories. At the mercy of thugs.

Ignore the messages of this book that cry, no, beg for peace...ignore the fact that we average citizens really have so little control over the big stuff, but its the little stuff that keeps us going...keep treating your kids like the pain in the tails that they are. Afterall, without unloved and unwanted kids, who will I have to defend my children from?

Personally, I hope some other generation has to deal with the next disaster, not us. Too bad I don't get to choose when...at least I can choose how.

my .02

joe

"The Road" is a bare, grim story set in an even more grim world, one where hope is dead, but the love of a father and son remain.

It's a minimalist story. An unnamed diaster has destroyed the world. The landscape is covered in ashes and dark snow, and the bitter cold breaks rocks.The forests are charred. Even common animals like cows and crows are extinct. An unnamed man and his unnamed son trudge in an unidentified portion of North America to an unspecified coast in a vain search for a better chance of survival. The man's unnamed wife committed suicide years ago. All the man and his boy have are a wobbly shopping cart of scavenged food and filthy blankets, and two bullets in the man's pistol. Cannibals prowl the landscape.

The man and boy are almost always cold, hungry, wet, and dirty. Still they drag on, vainly clingly to hope. The man knows they are doomeed, but will not let himself or his son falter.

Even though they know their situation is hopeless, the man and boy are still different. The man has sold himself to resignation for his son's sake, but the son still sees good in the world, attempting to help the few other travelers they meet.

Any parent can sympathize with the father in the book. After reading this, I'll never be afraid to kiss my own children.

Sorry, but I just didn't get it and didn't want to waste my time trying. At first I tried to hang in there but found the story so redundantly monotonous and depressing I just had to start skimming. I actually dreaded picking up the book again and having to re-enter that world but I held out hope there for awhile that there was or would be something in there that made it all worth it. But I just couldn't keep it up. I'm sure literarily-speaking it's very well written and apparently the monotony and depression was actually the point but those themes just aren't my idea of entertainment. "No Country for Old Men" wasn't exactly a happy story either but at least it was an entertaining story with riveting scenes and great characters. There's nothing "entertaining" about this story. If you'd rather not spend your leisure time voluntarily inducing literary depression then avoid this number like the plague. For me, life's just too short to dwell on this stuff.
But that's just me.