The Road

Paperback, 306 pages

English language

Published April 26, 2010 by Picador USA, imusti.

ISBN:
978-0-330-51300-5
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
690559102

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4 stars (26 reviews)

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. --back cover

38 editions

A tale of emotional and physical stamina

4 stars

I think the takeaway with this tale is to never stop trying, to never give up. There’s no promise of something better, just the very human decision to will yourself forward. That if a better place is indeed out there, it can only be reached through effort, one step at a time.

Overwrought, didn't quite land for me

3 stars

I can see why for many this is a beloved book for some, but it didn't capture me.

The writing often felt plodding and overwrought, instead of evocative and touching. And this novel is all scene and style and very little story, so there was not much else to go on.

I found myself wishing this had been a short story instead of a novel.

Too bleak for me

1 star

I badly wanted to like this, but honestly, I couldn't actually finish it. I skipped to the end after I'd read about a third of it. It was so bleak, and the world it was in was so awful, I just could not continue and I've had no urge to return to it. I'm sure it's well-written and all, it just isn't for me.

La Carretera: una obra fundamental.

5 stars

He descubierto a Cormac McCarthy. Acabo de leer su obra cumbre, La Carretera, y vaya si me ha calado. Por su estilo, directo, poético, duro y bello, que me gusta mucho y que me resulta afín y ameno. Pero también por su temática, que me parece fundamental. ¿De qué trata? Para mí trata del sentido de la vida para nuestra generación, época de Cultura del Shock y cúlmen de la Sociedad del Espectáculo. Cualquiera que tenga mis casi cincuenta, más si está criando a un hijo, se habrá sentido de una forma íntima, difícil de explicar, una o muchas veces, en esa carretera que recorren los protagonistas del libro, en la que uno busca un futuro para él y para los suyos, un rayo de sol en un mundo en apariencia gris, decadente e inseguro, que amenaza en convertirse en ceniza de una manera más o menos literal, según el …

Review of 'The Road' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I've read this book some dozen times through. It's the very first book I have ever read that as soon as I finished reading it the first time, I flipped back to page one.

I know the writing style isn't for everyone, in many ways it's more like long-form free verse than "proper fiction". That said, if it resonates with you, it will really resonate with you because it has been set free from some of the formalist constraints that allow us to imagine we are simply reading a story and not immersed in a vision.

Post-apocalyptic scenarios are very personally meaningful to me for a variety of reasons, including being raised by a hippie survivalist through the 80s dream of nuclear holocaust, and the resulting recurring nightmares throughout my entire life I learned to channel into lucid dreaming. The apocalypse is my personal inner playground. I can't ever change …

Review of 'The Road' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

brilliantly written. the book never focuses on things that do not matter to the story- we are never told what happened that destroyed the world (though there are clues), we never get the names of the father and son... these things don't matter. what does matter - shockingly, given the bleak world they inhabit - is love, faith, persistence, and honesty. loved this book.

Review of 'The Road [Jan 01, 2011] McCarthy, Cormac' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I have heard so many great things about this book. I only ever heard of it when I heard that Viggo Mortensen was in the movie based on this book. I didn't even watch the movie. So I thought that maybe this book will be as great as I had heard everyone said it would be. Well... it wasn't. I have read other post - apocalyptic books, granted they are either YA or zombie books (though I have read part of the Passage by Cronin) - so this book just fell flat for me.

The Reasons I did not like this book:
1. One of the reasons this might have happened is that I like it when a book actually explains how the world got like that. The Road did not.
2. The writing Style. I mean I do not mind experimental writing style but as there were nothing to …

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