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The Road (Oprah's Book Club)
written by Cormac McCarthy
Studio : Vintage Books
by Vintage Books
Release Date : 2007-03-28
Publisher : Vintage Books
Released : 2007-03-28
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780739482643
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 2139 reviews)
List Price : $14.95
Our Price : $4.95
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ISBN13: 9780307387899
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Condition: NEW
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Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Product Description |
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National Bestseller 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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Cooltechelectronics.com Review |
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
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powerful reading |
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The story is captivating and powerful. It's about father/son, survival, fate/god, and struggle to keep your morals. However, I have to say the final result of reading this book is to make me buy extra ammo. |
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Did not live up to the hype |
It is a rare feeling in a 'classic' book to find that the two hundredth page is almost identical to the first.
Perhaps the author's intention was to show the bleak repetition of a world shed of almost all delight. If so, then he succeeded.
'By day the banished sun circles the Earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.'
Beautiful, poetic, and yet... for me at least... so often uninteresting. |
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Dark and depressing majesty.... |
When you look at it just the right way, "The road" starts to resemble several of Stephen King's books at once. Whether "The stand" or "Dark Tower" (heptalogy is it?) or any other post-apocalyptic book that has ever been writen since the invention of the genre. And in a way, Ursula Le Guin has every right to be pissed about double standards of literary circles who wilfully chose to ignore entire body of speculative fiction which, during one time or the other, concerned itself with these themes. But, soon as Cormac McCarty choose to write something that resembles the forementioned genre, everybody was suddenly up on their feet shouting how great and brilliant the book was and how it is going the change the concept of American literature in upcoming years. You may, of course, listen to those voices with sceptical doubt, or you may dive into this book and judge for yourself. I did precisely that (both actually) and was surprised - book was actually good.
First of all, this isn't the action packed post-apocalyptic story, and the upcoming movie will probably be total disaster. Why? Because Hollywood in it's entire history couldn't make good meditational movie about human condition. And "The road" is precisely that - meditation about humanity which can (and does) work in medeium of language but is utterly untranslatable into anything else. Only person that could have done it in a way this books deserves is Michelangelo Antonioni and he's been dead for couple of years. So, that being said, you should know that narrationwise and plotwise this book is as simple as it gets. We have father and son which travel through destroyed country in search for someting. Hope, new way of existence, meaning of life or whatever you call it. Actuall process of getting there, travelling on the road, avoding band of savages, starving etc. is just the backside story, something which can easily be disposed off. All of it is a conventional, genre stuff, seen and experienced in many a novel out there. But, what makes "The road" different from great percentage of post-apocalyptic body of work is it's language, it's structure and tone which is deeply personal and evocative. One of those languages that pull you in, from which you have trouble letting go, constant staying into back of your head, nagging and being present. And that's one of the ingredients of great literature.
McCarthy goes on introspective journey here. There is no moralty present, there is no hero or group whose ideology must always be shining beacon on the end of the dark passage. Every ideology is destroyed, every bond is shatterd and only thing that remains is mere instinct of survival. Question that concerns McCarthy here is this one - how can we, when confronted with total dehumanisation (and you may write anything inside this statement, from free market ideology to totalitarism), remain humane. Do we want to, why do we want it, and can we actually do that? If civilisation is destroyed, upon which grounds whe can build our identity. And final answer to this question is inconclusive, because lanuage in it's totality cannot represent the New World. And upon notion of New World this book ends, remaining silent on what comes next. Reader takes on alone.
It's a pleasure to read this one, it's evocative and deeply disturbing, and questions posed here wait for us just behind the corner. "The road" sets direciton, but travelling we have to do for ourselves. |
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Uh... |
Poppa?
Yes?
Does our story have a point?
No
No?
No
Does it have well developed characters?
No
Okay
Okay
Poppa?
Yes?
Why would anyone read this pile of crap?
Because
Because?
Because literary critics are herd animals. They don't know why, but they think they have to like this book. So they'll write great reviews and the public will fall for it.
Will anyone like this book Poppa?
No
Okay
Okay
After reading this book and then reading the reviews of several newspapers and literary critics I am now more convinced than ever that critics will give high marks to any book that they either don't understand or that is so remarkably boring they think it must be important. Yes, McCarthy's work here is remarkable for it's prose, but it's story is astounding in it's complete inability to make me care. There's no point to this story. No explanation of the apocalyptic future, no sense of what the man is hoping to accomplish. Nothing. It is an exceptionally brilliant example of writer hubris and pretentiousness. The idea that he can get away with writing a story with no beginning, no arc, no plot, and no ending is astounding. I'm sort of angry I invested any time in either these characters or this story. Literary critics may consider Cormac McCarthy a brilliant writer, but I consider him a bloated, pretentious hack. |
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For every father or son |
This book is a must read for anyone who is a father, or who has had a father. The trials and tribulations in this book are extreme, but symbolic of the journey fathers and sons share as they take on the world together - and apart.
There is a nudity depiction and some hard words. There is definately some adult material.
My recommendation is to read this book and then call your Dad and tell him you love him.
God bless & Best wishes. |
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