The Road
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4.3 • 186 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
NOW AN ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATED FILM STARRING VIGGO MORTENSEN
"So good that it will devour you. It is incandescent" Daily Telegraph
A father and his young son walk alone through burned America, heading slowly for the coast. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. They have nothing but a pistol to defend themselves against the men who stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food - and each other.
PRAISE FOR THE ROAD
"A masterpiece that will soon be considered a classic" Herald
"McCarthy conjures from this pitiless flight the miracle of unswerving humanity. Gripping beyond belief" Chris Cleave, Sunday Telegraph
"One of the most shocking and harrowing but ultimately redemptive books I have read. It is an intensely intimate story. It is also a warning" Kirsty Wark, Observer Books of the Year
"You will read on, absolutely convinced, thrilled, mesmerized. All the modern novel can do is done here" Alan Warner, Guardian
"The first great masterpiece of the globally warmed generation. Here is an American classic which, at a stroke, makes McCarthy a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature" Andrew O'Hagan
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Cormac McCarthy’s searing vision of a hellish postapocalyptic America won him the Pulitzer Prize in 2006, and this uncompromising novel has only grown in stature since. Told with the author’s signature starkness of prose, The Road follows an unnamed father and son trying to get south before a deadly winter sets in. Descriptions of the charred landscape come in dreamily vivid fragments that add up to a sustained, trance-like effect. Examining human endurance in the most extreme of conditions, McCarthy vigorously tests the limits of faith.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Violence, in McCarthy's postapocalyptic tour de force, has been visited worldwide in the form of a "long shear of light and then a series of low concussions" that leaves cities and forests burned, birds and fish dead and the earth shrouded in gray clouds of ash. In this landscape, an unnamed man and his young son journey down a road to get to the sea. (The man's wife, who gave birth to the boy after calamity struck, has killed herself.) They carry blankets and scavenged food in a shopping cart, and the man is armed with a revolver loaded with his last two bullets. Beyond the ever-present possibility of starvation lies the threat of roving bands of cannibalistic thugs. The man assures the boy that the two of them are "good guys," but from the way his father treats other stray survivors the boy sees that his father has turned into an amoral survivalist, tenuously attached to the morality of the past by his fierce love for his son. McCarthy establishes himself here as the closest thing in American literature to an Old Testament prophet, trolling the blackest registers of human emotion to create a haunting and grim novel about civilization's slow death after the power goes out. 250,000 announced first printing; BOMC main selection.
Customer Reviews
Hauntingly Beautiful
At first, McCarthy's writing style is slightly confusing. He doesn't use "" and he doesn't tell us who is speaking. But once we get over this, the story he tells is hauntingly beautiful. Brilliant descriptive writing painting the bleak picture of a father and son's struggle in a post-apocalyptic earth. Great movie as well with Viggo Mortenson and Kodi Smit-McPhee. Definitely worth reading/watching.
A story about gratitude
Some people see only the horror in this book but there is so much beauty, especially in the exquisitely crafted language. My absolute favourite book.
Oh my, I couldn’t put it down
Brilliantly written, heart rending