that was a strange read. it follows the pattern of a lot of movies these days that showcase the middle of a story. this however is compelling, heartfelt, and powerful.
as a father, it was horrible to think about having to be in this situation. it is dark, depressing while leaving just enough to your imagination, including the initial reason for the world being in that particular state as well as the identity of the characters.
in the end i don't know whether to be hopeful for the survivors or not.
I love McCarthy's writing style in this book. I haven't read a fiction book in a while and this one is definitely making me want to change that!
Couldn't put this book down. While very bleak in its outlook, its also very moving. I hope the movie does it some justice.
The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes. Out on the roads the pilgrims sank down and fell over and died and the bleak and shrouded earth went trundling past the sun and returned again as trackless and as unremarked as the path of any nameless sisterworld in the ancient dark beyond.
jnonfiction replies...
this book completely wrecked me. i walked around hollow for about a week. especially after passages like this (where he's essentially challenging himself to believe what he used to believe in light of present reality, and possibly even denouncing himself), i conclude(d) that the road offers exactly no hope, ultimately. it's chilling because it's so possible.
trey replies...
Perhaps partially because everyone was so emphatic that this book was incredibly bleak, it didn't really bother me that much. There were certainly parts that made me tear up, but it wasn't really the ending. Based on people's reaction, I actually expected it to be worse. I thought they were both going to die--possibly eaten. SPOILERS I didn't think the book was entirely hopeless. I can't see how you could take the ending to not be hopeful. The people the boy met were the good guys. The man even says at the end that he couldn't take the boy with him (kill him), even though he once thought he could. I take that to mean he's more hopeful for the boy's future. There are many (admittedly small) bits of hope throughout the story like that.
jnonfiction replies...
i guess i just felt like mccarthy did such a thorough job of assuring us that this (post-apocalyptic) world is absolutely incapable of sustaining life, that the hope represented by the folks the boy meets has to be a false hope. momentary, but ultimately meaningless. i reserve the right, of course, to change my mind upon further readings.
IanS replies...
But didn't you find that hope infectious? I feel like he left just enough room for you to take it that way, to believe he can make it through, even though you really know there shouldn't be any chance. Because that's pretty universal, pushing through on the off-chance of a decent outcome. I wind up at the end feeling like the dad, knowing deep down that there's nothing out there, but being unable to stop imagining that it could turn out ok.
jnonfiction replies...
i know, i know! i'm normally not such a fatalist, it's just... with this book, the relentless hopelessness of his vision overwhelmed my ability to believe against the evidence. Honestly, everyone else I talk to interprets it the way you do, so maybe I'm misreading it. After so many pages of death and depravity, I just expect it to keep going on, after the last page.
IanS replies...
Right! I think the brilliance of the writing is the insistence of that dichotomy, that can make even someone as hopeful as you give in to the inevitable. I wonder if the hopefulness of the average reader of this book has more to do with that being the natural reader response to post-apocalyptic fiction. Though I guess I wonder if your response is more true to what's actually on the page and if the rest of us aren't foolishly reading optimism into where there can be none, because that's just what people do.