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The Road

Author: Cormac Mccarthy
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

127 reviews
Sales Rank: 99

Media: Paperback
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.9

ISBN: 0330447548
EAN: 9780330447546
ASIN: 0330447548

Publication Date: June 1, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New Book - In Stock - UK Seller - Very Fast Delivery - First Class Customer Service

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Customer Reviews: Read 122 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

bleak and intensly believable July 22, 2008
the spare style is perfect for the mood of this book. there are no wasted words to distract you from it's grinding inevitability. each dialogue is a tender vignette.

4 out of 5 stars

A modern classic July 22, 2008
The main appeal for me was the post-apocolyptic setting and the scenario of day-to-day survival. This is such an interesting topic as Cormac McCarthy gives to us a month's journey which brings every aspect of being into question.
The man and his son are forced to travel across the ruin that is now America. Disaster of some kind (Poss Nuclear) is evident and it looks pretty certain that the world has suffered as a single body. Nothing grows, the winds are colder and humanity is sparse - to the point of extinction.
The road is a bleak tale with redemption found in simple things such as the finding of food and clothing. Cormac McCarthy describes in alarming surreality the bonds that tie us and what we would have to do in times of ultimate peril.
So what makes the road so engrossing?
The style of McCarthy's writing for this particular story is not the standard affair and the descriptions are so desperately real the reader has no choice but to put his/herself into the mind of the protagonist.
There are some pretty grim scenes in this story which will stay with you a long time...but the true horror is realising what we, as a race, will do to survive.
This is the kind of read that stays with you long after the last page has been turned. The theme of survival and emotional crisis are strong, not once does the book lose sight of its goal and the reader does get carried along, albeit stressfully. I found the first quarter of the story to be utterly depressing and I just couldnt see hope...

This is a fantastic book. At times uneventful, at other times bitterly realistic...what more can I say.

5 out of 5 stars

Indelible July 11, 2008
As a fairly new parent Ive spent moments imagining worst case scenario's relating to my son and the emptiness that must follow. This book gave me that same wrenching physical feeling of loss, only magnified to levels I had never imagined. Loss of everything including, in the darkest moments where bravery gives way to reality, hope. No fiction has ever made me feel so desperately sad. For me the scenario isnt what hurts, its the love.

5 out of 5 stars

Desperately good July 8, 2008
It is odd to recommend so strongly a book in which there is so little pleasure in the reading. From the opening sentences of The Road you are left in no doubt that this is going to be a tough journey. The central characters never have names. The prose is so pared down that even a comma soon comes to represent a feature in the landscape of the page. Even dialogue is given none of the normal grammatical flourishes.

Two figures - a man and a young boy - struggle to survive in a post apocalyptic landscape. Everything is burnt. Ash is like snow. Those who survived the initial conflagration have long since passed by, looted the food, and now learnt to live by preying on each other. The man and the boy travel in hope, but with fading expectation. And as the reader is drawn more closely to their ordeal, their hope fades too.

This is not a book to be constantly picked up and put down: the monotony of survival which provides the plot will make the plot itself seem monotonous. Read it instead in a burst. If you do you will get your reward. You will then experience the poetry of the barren prose in the barren landscape, and how it only serves to make the flame of human spirit which is at the centre of the book shine more brightly. And then gradually, and paradoxically, you will begin to enjoy reading.

Because oddly, brilliantly, and almostly unbearably sadly, this bleak book is entirely about the human spirit. It is like a humanist anthem: a tale of how when everything is gone, including religion, the flame of loyalty, love and devotion is almost impossible to extinguish.

By the end, which I read on the Tube, I was openly crying - it was impossible to do otherwise.

The Road has already secured its status as a modern classic. In years to come schoolchildren will be made to write essays on it, and doubtless seek out unintended metaphors and meanings. So read it now, before it is burdened by too much fame, and be enriched by its simple, skeletal beauty.

1 out of 5 stars

The Road July 8, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful

A 'Road' to boredom, better than any anaesthetic. A good read for those who annually roll about in Glastonbury mud! The words 'just awful' compliment this dire read.

Mike