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 The Road by Cormac McCarthy Pulitzer Prize
(Brought to you by jat impatientreader.com) There have been a number of stories about the end of mankind, both in print and on the screen: from War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells to On the Beach by Nevil Shute. Or a film like Testament, which in 1983 brought home the reality of what the aftermath of a nuclear war would be like, and more than that, how it would affect a single family. We can't imagine what it would be like yet all of us go to see movies (Independence Day, Armageddon, 28 Days Later) or read books (The Stand, Swan Song) that tell us "how it would be." The trouble is all of those movies and books take a viewpoint either so far removed from what a person's real experience would be or are more for entertainment's sake than anything else. We couldn't possibly know what it would be like. That's where we find The Road, the Pulitzer Prize winning book by Cormac McCarthy that tells us the story of a father and son on a journey across an America that has been blasted by some unknown catastrophe (we never are told what exactly has happened) into a state so far beyond hope that it seems almost unimaginable. And yet, on their journey across a land covered with ash that falls like snow, and nights so black you can't see in front of you, somehow they find the strength to move forward together, father and son, against all odds. The writing is simple, but beautiful in its descriptions of a land familiar yet warped by disaster. Vestiges of civilization are everywhere yet almost no one else inhabits this world that the father and son must walk through. And almost everyone who does survive is reduced to an animal-like state, killing and in some cases eating each other simply to survive. Violence is everywhere, and the father does his best to shield his son from it. What they go through in the course of their journey is unimaginable, yet they push each other to continue onward, each driven by his love for the other and the thought that somewhere out there, there's good still to be found in the world. Our characters have no names, and their dialog has no quotes around it, but it's easy to tell who's talking. There were so few talking characters in the book that you hardly needed them to be there anyway. One of the things I liked about their relationship was that the father never talked down to the son. I got the impression the son was 10 or 12 years old, yet the father treated him like an equal. The father was always honest with him, although he tried to spare him from some of the more grotesque sights. And the boy had what I thought were realistic reactions to what had happened. I think if he had been younger, he couldn't have done what was required of him both physically and mentally. If he'd been older, he would have not had the innocence that was required for the story. So McCarthy did a wonderful job of writing both characters. The boy, clearly he knows what's going on, he's always asking the father if they're going to die, yet he retains a spark of life that even their darkest times can't extinguish. And the dad, his goal in life is to find hope for his son. Even when he knows he's reaching the end of his rope, his thoughts are never of himself, but of his son and what's going to happen to the boy when he's gone. It's heartbreakingly sad, and when, at the end of the book, there's a glimmer of daylight that's allowed to reach into this dark place, you breathe a huge sigh of relief. This is the first Pulitzer Prize winning book I've read in a long time, and it may be the last. It is not my usual choice of reading material. But the theme that goes through the book, of love that literally outlasts the end of civilization, is compelling, and it will drive you to finish even though the story is dark beyond words. If I had one quibble with the book, it was from a purely scientific standpoint, and that is whatever the disaster was, it would either have been so devastating as to leave nothing, or there would have been much more left than what was depicted. That's a truly minor drawback though. The Road is a fully realized work that describes the undying love between father and son in the face of unimaginable circumstances, and it richly deserved every award it received. I give it 4 and a half stars, and the only reason I'm taking half a star off is that as good as it was, you probably would not want to read it again and again because it's too much. The Road can be found on Amazon through this link:
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