The Road is Cormac McCarthy’s tale of a father and son’s trek through a post-apocalyptic American wasteland. The bleakness of the landscapes and cityscapes are overwhelming. The despair of nearly every situation is relentless to the point that you’re surprised when things somehow keep getting worse.
But somehow McCarthy’s world seems so alive. The psychological relationship between the father and boy is screaming at you from the negative space of the dialogue. The universality of irrational hope in the face of hopelessness makes the dirty and downtrodden protagonists real. The severe brutality of the road, the loneliness of a boy who’s never seen another child, and the physical, emotional and mental decomposition of a father doing the best he can more than earns any bits of light and redemption that leak through our shiny world into their gray one.
I read this book right before I started working at Lemuria, and it has been one of my favorite reads 
this year. I finished it in two sittings and have been chewing on it for a few weeks now. McCarthy was so good that I decided my next read would be The Border Trilogy, which starts with All the Pretty Horses. I am close to the end, and it has been wonderful.
There is an upcoming movie adaptation of The Road starring Viggo Mortensen and I just wanted to leave you all with some fun facts about the book and the movie, from wildaboutmovies.com:
Cormac McCarthy won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for his gripping, stunning and shocking post-apocalyptic novel, “The Road.”
“The Road” was also picked as an “Oprah Book Of The Month.” In addition, Cormac McCarthy granted only his third ever interview to Oprah in 2006 for his novel, “The Road.”
“The Road” hits movie theaters, from the same studio that brought you “No Country For Old Men,” The Weinstein Company – well, who knows when?
In the movie “The Road” father is played by Oscar nominee Viggo Mortensen, (“Eastern Promises”), and son by newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee. Oscar winners Robert Duvall and Charlize Theron make brief but resonating appearances.
-Hunter
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