The Road by Cormac McCarthy
I picked this one up when it first came out because I’m a sucker for a post-apocalyptic tale, but didn’t really get a chance to read it until just recently — and, all I can say is, wow. Blood Meridian was an uncomfortable read for me, just by the sheer violence and how visceral it all was — but this one grabbed at my heart, too.
And it had me by my throat all through the first half, just trying not to bawl because of that boy. I can’t handle starving kids, and McCarthy tells the story through a father’s POV with such lovely, simple prose that it paints a picture that shouldn’t be beautiful, but it is, and it’s just stark and desolate as well.
THIS MIGHT BE KIND OF A SPOILER:
Awful shit happens in this book. There are images that I really, really don’t want in my head — but because the story ends on an uplifting note, it wasn’t the kind of book that makes me want to just cry in a corner for a couple of days, eating a lot of whipped cream, and then flagellating myself for taking so much for granted.
Hey, according to Amazon, it’s an Oprah pick, too! Good good — it’s one of those books you really hope people do pick up, if for no other reason than to talk about it over dinner when you have nothing else to say to them.
“It wasn’t the kind of book that makes me want to just cry in a corner for a couple of days, eating a lot of whipped cream, and then flagellating myself for taking so much for granted.”
Oddly enough, that reminds me of reading Dune. For weeks afterward, I went into some weird water-conservation mode. It felt so wrong wasting it when people on Arrakis had like NONE.
I’m glad to hear it ended on a uplifting note, though. I need to have some sort of hope at the end of a book like that.
Yeah — I was really, really worried, because a book like that, you just don’t know … the author can go either way. In some ways, the suspense of not knowing kind of makes you not want to go on, because you don’t want that terrible feeling at the end of it. But at the same time, it’s so GOOD that you can’t put it down, and you have to know.