(((Finishing Update)))
Wow… just Wow!!! What a great book. It’s no small wonder that The Road won the Pulitzer Prize. I just finished the book. And the ending is sad, but there is hope too. The journey continues, but I’d say that the boy is in good hands and will be cared for, although his father died. The Man, as the story calls him, fulfilled his oath to the mother in keeping the son from dying in such a barren and wasted landscape. He gave his life for the life of his son. The world had not changed, they are still in the burned out corpse of what was left after whatever apocalypse had struck it, yet there were now others, “The Good Guys”, to help the boy along. Family from the ashes of destruction and death. Great book. Pick it up today. You will not be dissatisfied. -PgMe
*****
(((Update #1)))
Alrighty then, I’m 200 pages in and I’m hooked! Much better than the Border Trilogy writing which he McCarthy did ten years earlier.
The back story seems to be a Nuclear Winter lasting years after what could have been alluded to on page 52 and 53 as a Nuclear exchange or war. Ongoing? Could be. But the mother is passed, took her own life to save resources in the aftermath so the boy could make it, even if the parents didn’t.
They’re still clawing their way south to warmer weather and safer places. The father is really sick, coughing blood and weakening… radiation poisoning from the continual grey ash nuclear fall out?? And the one goal is getting his son, the boy, to safety. Whatever that takes. Could the father also be sacrificing himself for the boy?
I still have a bit to go and I want to see other people come into the story too, but all we’ve encountered sonnfar are “bad guys” and walking skeleton, she’ll shocked survivors just trying to find good, shelter and safety of their own.
This is a really sad and depressing story perhaps accounting for what McCarthy thinks was awaiting the world during the Cold War Era. Mutual Assured Destruction? This books so far is a reminder that theree are worse fates than death. -PgMe
*****
Good Sunday morning to all you readers and adventurers. I’ve decided to take a departure from Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy to read his 2006 novel The Road which won him the Pulitzer Prize.
It’s just that as I started reading The Crossing, which is the middle book in the trio of books which starts with All The Pretty Horses and ends with Cities of the Plains, I was having a trouble reentering the writing style and cadence of McCarthy’s world along the Mexico/Texas border. I will eventually try again, but for now… “so many books, too little time”.
I just started this morning with The Road, what seems like a post apocalyptic novel about the journey of a man and a boy thru an ashen wasteland, possibly in the northwest United States, as the head south for warmer weather and survival… together. Food, light, wood, fire, warmth, dry clothes… and hope. All things in short supply as they struggle for breath and life along a Road with only a shopping cart, a pistol for protection and each other. There isn’t much in the way 0f backstory here, at least not yet only 20 pages in, but it may be coming throughout the book, artfully and sparingly dropped here and there as the story continues.
The story of a man leading and protecting his boy to some safe and better place reminded me a bit so far of the movie Children of Men, based on a 1992 novel of the same name by P.D. James, that tells the story of a loner man in a dystopian landscape trying to protect the first woman to be pregnant for decades from a government who just wants to capture and experiment on her… which would kill her child. Similar premise, similar storyline maybe? Who knows without reading both books.
But this post isn’t about Children of Men, it’s about the start of a new adventure for me, reading and possibly blogging a review afterwards of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Why not read along with me?
-PgMe
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