The Road (Oprah's Book Club)

It was right there, in the description of the item in my Amazon cart; it was in parenthesis: (The Oprah Winfrey Book Club)--and, after a few clicks and an innocuous transfer of some money-numbers on a computer screen, the book was mine and it was on its way. Over the next couple of days, as I awaited the book's arrival, I had to wonder what I'd done. Was I actually going to like this book or was I going soft, like a piece of fruit being tossed (and dropped a few times) around the library by a couple of bored high-school kids that don't understand why anyone would read the book when you can just watch the movie? I'd been told to check out Cormac McCarthy several times over the past few years and I'd been putting it off. I like stories of the macabre, I told myself. I'm not mainstream. I don't like the sort of books that populate the shelves of Barnes and Noble. (Although I couldn't quite stifle that voice in the back of my head that kept whispering: What about King, you idiot. How much more mainstream can you get, you hypocritical bastard.) I thought that if Oprah liked it, the woman adored by so many middle-aged woman across America, it probably wasn't for me. When the book arrived, sure enough, there it was: that great big gleaming O sticker, stuck to the front of my new book like a tumor, a mark that, to me, was as glaring and hideous as a scarlet A. I took the book to work with me, shamefully hiding the Oprah Book Club sticker with my fingers, and I read the first 50 pages or so. I read some more at lunch. I was intrigued; I was curious; I was drawn into the world of the book. I hadn't imagined a place so perversely dark and hopeless, so vague and yet so very real--so very human. I forgot about that little sticker on the front cover and I finished the book in a day and I immediately looked up Oprah's Book Club--what other kinds of things were on that list? What was I missing? "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy is a very good book. Its subject matter is most decidedly horror, but its style and restraint are the qualities of good literature. It chronicles the journey of a man (never named) and his young son as they travel through a world after some sort of apocalyptic disaster (never explained). All we know is that it's cold, food is extremely scarce, and everything is in ruins, covered in ash and falling to pieces. McCarthy's sparse writing style works perfectly to convey the desperate numbness of humanity reduced to a state of aimless survivalist. People are kept locked in basements like cattle to be eaten by other people; a woman gives birth to a baby and roasts it on a spit for dinner with her male companions; all the plants and birds and everything is dead. It is a bleak world and a bleak story, but with a lot of heart and much to say about the nature of altruism and the human spirit. Now, I've looked through Oprah's list of books from the past few years and most of what's listed there are not of much interest to someone like me who loves the horror genre and loves subversive fiction (besides a few works of Faulkner), but I have to say it is a solid list of 'literary' pieces of writing that I'm sure are important and powerful in the canon. I must say, my respect for Oprah has jumped considerably after looking over her list of books and knowing that she actually reads and encourages others to read--in a society that is becoming more and more illiterate and loosing its historical memory, anyone totting the value of the written word is a commendable and upstanding member of the human race in my eyes. Read "The Road." It is a wonderful piece of literary horror fiction.

This review contains SPOILERS. I will discuss plot points and the how the book ends in detail. IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THIS BOOK, AND DO NOT WISH TO KNOW HOW THIS BOOK ENDS DO NOT CONTINUE READING THIS REVIEW. Now if you continue on, I have given you ample warning and it's your own fault. The Road is a beautifully written account of a man and his son traveling the wasted post apocalyptic world. Love is the only thing that holds the two together and keeps them alive and moving forward where all things have become ash and death. McCarthy's style is compact and succinct in a way that is reminiscent of Hemingway's direct terseness. He effortlessly conveys deeply emotional situations with a few well chosen phrases. This book is a marvel to read simply for the language employed. The juxtaposition of the absolute horror of a world without life or joy set against the father and son whose love for each other is the only reason to continue to live is compelling and will keep the reader engrossed throughout the narrative. The two are constantly hungry and constantly on the lookout for "the bad guys". It turns out that "the bad guys" are any other living human being where all are starving without much food but the flesh of their fellow survivors. The boy never knew the world without this horror and the man can't let himself remember it, or else he will despair and give up. I loved this book, until the final pages. THIS IS THE MAJOR SPOILER PART. All throughout the book the man has been fighting tuberculosis, and at the end it finally kills him. He has saved one bullet in his revolver so that if the time should come he could kill the boy so that the boy could be spared the terrible fate of being raped, killed and eaten by other survivors as his dead mother had feared. Instead of killing the boy the man says that he just can't bear to hold his dead child in his arms, and tells the boy that he will be okay. Soon after the man dies a survivalist with a shotgun shows up and takes the boy with him where there is a safe home with a woman and two other children. This ending does not ring true. In all of the time that we follow the man and the boy they never meet one decent person. Then all of a sudden the boy is safe in the care of some miracle savior at the perfect time? I don't believe it. I think that it is the author who can't bear to hold the dead child in his arms. He could not face the grim ending he had set up for the entire span of the novel. Do I want to see the boy die? No, not at all. But the true ending is that the man kills the boy with that last bullet and then is himself overcome by his illness and dies. It's not pretty, but it is the real ending. If you have ignored my warnings about the spoilers and gotten this far, then I have to encourage you to read this book anyway despite the imperfect resolution. There is too much here that is of great value to dismiss the book because it has an unrealistic conclusion. It is deep and ponderous and will linger in your thoughts for a long, long time.

This book in unbelievable! Hits home like no other book Ive ever read. Amazing.

If you want to fully dive into a book that catches your full attention and makes you forget about the world, this is it. A real page-turner, beautifully written, amazing story, heartbreaking, insightful, entertaining.

In een vernietigende zwarte kou doolt een vader naar het zuiden met als enige motivatie zijn zoon. We volgen dit tweetal in een post-apocalyptische wereld van as en onmenselijkheid door zo helder beschreven vernietiging dat de adem stokt. Er is geen hoop, maar de lezer denkt het te kunnen vinden.

Can't even describe the emotions involved in this book. I could FEEL the love between the father and the son as this man tried to raise his child amongst cannibals and chaos in a post apocalyptic world. This book gets into your heart. So much emotion conveyed in a simple " okay"

Brilliant read, loved it. Fast, free delivery from Amazon