America is a wasteland, covered in ash. The birds are gone, the fish are gone, and humans are few and far between. And when you do meet up with fellow travelers, you'll probably wish you hadn't.
This is the setting of Cormac McCarthy's new novel, "The Road". The main characters, an unnamed father and son, trek through this wilderness of ash, pushing a grocery cart filled with their possessions: a tarp to keep off the rain and cold, blankets, and their last few cans of food.

Those of you who like post-apocalyptic fiction. If "wrenching and dark" is your cup of tea, this is the book for you.

The father-son bond in this book was shown instead of told. I was in tears at least twice while reading this, and not from a cheap, "emotion-plumbing" trick, either.

I can't think of anything story-wise that I didn't like. For those readers who are easily offended with strong language, I saw one s-word and quite a few abuses of God's name.

Curl up in a ball and cry. Okay, not quite. I was within maybe ten pages of the end one night and could not finish it. I saw how things were going to go (no spoilers) and had to wait for an entire day before I got the courage to get through it.

Used care when writing dialogue. It will be a bit repetitive, and if you're a stickler for correct punctuation, quotation marks, and smooth transitions between a character's thoughts, this might frustrate you at times. But really, give it a try. His writing style really fits the fractured world (and people) he portrays.

The writing is excellent. It puts you right with this desperate pair and makes you wait with them for the light at the end of the tunnel. After all the darkness, the few gleams of light shining through look blinding. The end was cautiously uplifting, but don't expect to toss it on the coffee table or in the library dropbox and go off whistling.

If you decide to read this, you won't escape unscathed. There were several implied instances of cannibalism (though never from our heroes). There is one particularly disturbing scene that is all the more shocking because McCarthy lets his readers figure out for themselves what's happening. There are quite a few corpses in this book, some described in pretty gross language. The constant dread of what our heroes may find or what may happen to them could be too much for some readers.

Although the subject matter is very dark, McCarthy never lets it overwhelm the man and his son. Just when it looks like the world has sunk to complete depravity, you see the love they have for each other. Self-sacrifice and love stand even taller after seeing the utter bleakness of the surrounding world.

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Created Mar 30, 2007 at 4:09pm • Submit your own review...