The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)

The Road

by Cormac McCarthy (2006)

First Sentence: “When he woke in the woods in the dark and cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him.”

Cormac McCarthy is one of the greatest novelists still alive today (a phantasm of Faulker), and his newest book, The Road, clearly exemplifies this claim. It’s full of McCarthy’s terse dialogue, minute detail (but not TOO much, like Blood Meridian) stream-of-consciousness, masculinity, and an excruciatingly intense violent plot (win!). Not to mention that, in addition to all of these things, it’s also overwhelmingly sad, which is not an easy thing for a novel to be. It’s the perfect combination of everything, with exact measurements dolled out like a recipe for brownies.

It’s about a father and a son walking south to Mexico, to find warmth in a post-apocalyptic world, whose journey is beset on all sides by cannibals, and hunger, and the freezing cold. The sun is gone behind clouds of black dust, and the only light comes from the father’s love of his son. Without each other, all will be lost. This book is heart-wrenching, desperate and mesmerizing. The intensity of their journey, of the book itself, is indescribable, so I won’t even try. Let me just say that I was literally in tears in the middle of a crowded Barnes and Nobles, trying to pretend like there was something in my eyes. You will not be able to breathe until you finish it. It’s a fast read, because you have to see have to see have to see what happens next.