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The Road (Oprah's Book Club)
Best known for his Border Trilogy, hailed in the San Francisco Chronicle as "an American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century," Cormac McCarthy has written ten rich and often brutal novels, including the bestselling No Country for Old Men, and The Road. Profoundly dark, told in spare, searing prose, The Road is a post-apocalyptic masterpiece, one of the best books we've read this year, but in case you need a second (and expert) opinion, we asked Dennis Lehane, author of equally rich, occasionally bleak and brutal novels, to read it and give us his take. Read his glowing review below. --Daphne Durham
Guest Reviewer: Dennis Lehane
Dennis Lehane, master of the hard-boiled thriller, generated a cult following with his series about private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, wowed readers with the intense and gut-wrenching Mystic River, blew fans all away with the mind-bending Shutter Island, and switches gears with Coronado, his new collection of gritty short stories (and one play). Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehane
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER
National Book Critic's Circle Award Finalist
A New York Times Notable Book
One of the Best Books of the Year
The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times, New York, People, Rocky Mountain News, Time, The Village Voice, The Washington Post
The searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-—and each other.
The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.
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Additional Product Information
- ISBN: 9780307387899
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645 Reviews
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 01, 2007 Type: User Review |
A good book ... but a drag
Recommended only for serious reading! This book can potentially upset anyone! The story, characters and plot(not much though!) are well done. Author has successfully shown the brutal reality one would face in case of an environmental holocaust.
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 3.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Dec 01, 2007 Type: User Review |
hm
I had to read this for my English 1A class and considering I'm a fan of chic lit (Twilight and Sarah Dessen books are my favorite!) I actually liked this book. It was a little slow and I probably wouldn't have finished it if it weren't for the...
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 4.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Nov 30, 2007 Type: User Review |
Good Book
I liked the book. I had a hard time putting down. I wanted to know what happened. What happened to the world? What will happen to the father and son? It was a well written book with emotion, vivid details and (in today's world) realistic....
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 5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Nov 30, 2007 Type: User Review |
Blah.
Well-written, but the book is slow and doesn't seem to go anywhere. I was bored.
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3.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Nov 30, 2007 Type: User Review |
Read it or weep
Not since Johnny Got His Gun has there been a more chilling look at the aftermath of war. Written in spare, compelling chapters, McCarthy shows the reader why he deserves to be listed as one of the best living American writers. Not for the Semper...
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Nov 28, 2007 Type: User Review |
The road of life
McCarthy's The Road is depressing encouraging.
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4.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Nov 28, 2007 Type: User Review |
Depressing... but a good read
I remember reading McCarthy's "Blood Medirian" in college and I hated it with a passion. I hated it because it was so bloody and so violent that it made my stomach churn and it became really difficult for me to finish reading it. After that...
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4.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Nov 28, 2007 Type: User Review |
The Road
I picked this book up by accident while I was shopping. I had never read any of Cormac McCarthy's books. Long story short... I didn't put this book down till I finished it! I actually felt like I was watching the entire scene in a theatre. This...
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5.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Nov 27, 2007 Type: User Review |
Plenty of faith, but very little hope
I won't go into details about why this book is and is not a masterpiece of literary achievement. There is no doubt that Cormac McCarthy can write, he has a number of awards and fans to prove just that. What I do think is important to know is that...
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3.00/5 |
| From: Amazon Posted: Nov 27, 2007 Type: User Review |
The Best Book I've Read This Year
I just read this book about a week ago, and I absolutely cannot stop thinking about it. Cormac McCarthy is an incredible writer. I'm astonished by the negative reviews here. Sure, he dislikes standard punctuation, but that's his style--and it's...
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5.00/5 |
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