(47) The Road

Title: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Publisher: Vintage Books
287 pages
Genre:

Synopsis: The searing, post-apocalyptic 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.

Review: This is one of those books that I feel like everyone has read and they either loved it or hated it.  Most of the people I had talked to hated it so I never picked it up until my sister told me she loved it and passed it on to my partner who thought it was "ok" and passed it on to me. Now I felt obligated to read it and figure out for myself if it was worth all the hype.

I still don't understand all the hype around this book.  I didn't hate it but I didn't really like it either.  Its a very dark book, dark, desolate, desperate, with no hope.  The lack of grammar and the repetitive text made this book difficult to follow in parts.  You couldn't always follow who was speaking or if they were speaking or if they were just thinking. The whole book seemed a bit pretentious.  Even though the language was easy and the writing was easy, the lack of punctuation just fell flat for me.  I'm glad I read it just to cross it off my list but I have a very big TBR pile that I would have preferred to dive into first.

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