The Road (Oprah's Book Club) by Cormac McCarthy Paperback Book

Details

Rent The Road (Oprah's Book Club)

Author: Cormac McCarthy

Format: Paperback, Paperback, Unabridged-CD, Unabridged-MP3, Abridged-CD

Publisher: Random House Inc

Published: Mar 2007

Genre: Fiction - Literary

Retail Price: $17.00

Pages: 287

Synopsis

A 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. They 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 wearting, 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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Reviews

BookLender review by Janae on 2007-04-28 15:27:34

The best thing about The Road is that it never goes into the politics or the history of the event that has put the father and son on the road. The reader experiences what they experience and understands their mindsets. Their is no omniscent point of view. When the reader stops expecting more imformation to come and understands that the lack of information is precisely what enables the verisimilitude, the story becomes truly meaningful.

BookLender review by Amber on 2007-05-07 16:20:18

Wow! I could not put this book down and actually finished it over one weekend. From the very beginning of the book, the reader is drawn in through McCarthy's descriptions of a father and son traveling alone and hiding from an unknown enemy. As the story progresses, more details about their past and the atrocities of their current world unfold -- the death squads that search for victims, the 'bad guys' that eat innocent children, and the bleak, gray stillness of a sunless existence. As another reviewer commented, there is no political tone to this story. It does not matter how the apocalypse happened. The only thing that matters is this father and son, fighting through the ash, and trying to find others like them. The good guys. I would highly recommend this novel!

BookLender review by Brenda on 2007-06-19 21:01:17

The Road was frightening, haunting and beautiful. Initially, the end was felt to be anticlamatic. but then you just get it!

BookLender review by Katie on 2007-05-21 18:02:49

An aching existential loneliness pervades this book, even more intensely than All The Pretty Horses. As the narrator nears the end of his life, he examines what mark he has made on the world, and what kind of world he is leaving for his son. Can there be redemption for any person when the whole human race appears to be both ****ed and doomed?

BookLender review by Debbie on 2010-03-19 16:38:08

It was an okay book, rather depressing and somewhat slow to read. I am gal I didn't buy this one... I was expcting an amazing,well crafted apocoliptic novel... whileI apprecitated the relationship between father and son and underlying theme there, it was basically boring :...