The Road: "Are you carrying the fire?" (The Road - Cormac McCarthy)

Member Name: joncarey9

Product:	The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Date:	03/10/09 (119 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A great story and a warning to all of us

Disadvantages: None

After seeing the trailer and hearing news of director John Hillcoat's upcoming film adaptation, The Road, I searched a little deeper and purchased author Cormac McCarthy's book of which it is based. I'm not a massive reader by any extent, so it was all news to me that The Road has been praised as a modern day classic by fans and critics alike. The only other time I have stumbled upon McCarthy's work is in the Coen Brothers adaptation of his book No Country for Old Men, an absolutely fantastic film, which now after finishing The Road I might go back and check out the original novel of.

The plot of The Road is that sometime in the past, in an undisclosed year an unexplained world event has happened, something which triggers the destruction of almost all life and civilisation on Earth. Nothing is explained about what has happened, all we know is that something massive has occurred and created this new post-apocalyptic world, perhaps it was a nuclear war, or the effects of global warming? This is left up to you as the reader to ponder over.

The story follows the journey of a father and son, known by no other names but that, as they travel the road in search of warmer climates and an almost mythical safe haven. Earth is now an extremely bleak place to live, ash fills the sky, with earthquakes and fires breaking out at every turn in the road, and as well of this it appears that of what human beings have been left alive the majority have resulted to cannibalism and the hunting and killing of their fellow man.

The Road is a dangerous place for anyone to travel on these days but it has to be done as the duo desperately searches for shelter and food amongst the plundered ruins they come across.

McCarthy's writing is almost poetic in style, at first it took me a while to get into (much like the story itself did) but it really gains momentum once you get used to and learn to accept his short snappy sentence structure and minimal dialogue. For me it represented the post-apocalyptic world perfectly, I love it when things aren't fully explained and it leaves it up to you to fill in the blanks. There's no need to dwell over what has happened to make the world like it is now, that's just a distant memory to the characters, like what a can of coke tastes like or how people used to live, it's all being forgotten with every day which passes.

For me The Road wasn't the out and out masterpiece it is hyped as being, it's a really great book and I did enjoy reading it, but there was just something missing, something which I still can't put my finger on. You can't deny that this is an important marker in literature though; the post-apocalyptic world which McCarthy portrays evokes feelings, at least for me, of a world which could easily be if global warming spirals out of control. I don't know if this was intentional but with all the things going with today's society it's a very real and scary future which could very well become ours.

Summary: Didn't quite reach the five stars but a brilliant book none the less