paperback, 307 pages
Published Nov. 11, 2009 by Pan Macmillan Picador.
Cormac McCarthy's tenth novel, The Road, is his most harrowing yet deeply personal work. Some unnamed catastrophe has scourged the world to a burnt-out cinder, inhabited by the last remnants of mankind and a very few surviving dogs and fungi. The sky is perpetually shrouded by dust and toxic particulates; the seasons are merely varied intensities of cold and dampness. Bands of cannibals roam the roads and inhabit what few dwellings remain intact in the woods.
Through this nightmarish residue of America a haggard father and his young son attempt to flee the oncoming Appalachian winter and head towards the southern coast along carefully chosen back roads. Mummified corpses are their only benign companions, sitting in doorways and automobiles, variously impaled or displayed on pikes and tables and in cake bells, or they rise in frozen poses of horror and agony out of congealed asphalt. The boy and his father …
Cormac McCarthy's tenth novel, The Road, is his most harrowing yet deeply personal work. Some unnamed catastrophe has scourged the world to a burnt-out cinder, inhabited by the last remnants of mankind and a very few surviving dogs and fungi. The sky is perpetually shrouded by dust and toxic particulates; the seasons are merely varied intensities of cold and dampness. Bands of cannibals roam the roads and inhabit what few dwellings remain intact in the woods.
Through this nightmarish residue of America a haggard father and his young son attempt to flee the oncoming Appalachian winter and head towards the southern coast along carefully chosen back roads. Mummified corpses are their only benign companions, sitting in doorways and automobiles, variously impaled or displayed on pikes and tables and in cake bells, or they rise in frozen poses of horror and agony out of congealed asphalt. The boy and his father hope to avoid the marauders, reach a milder climate, and perhaps locate some remnants of civilization still worthy of that name. They possess only what they can scavenge to eat, and the rags they wear and the heat of their own bodies are all the shelter they have. A pistol with only a few bullets is their only defense besides flight. Before them the father pushes a shopping cart filled with blankets, cans of food and a few other assets, like jars of lamp oil or gasoline siphoned from the tanks of abandoned vehicles—the cart is equipped with a bicycle mirror so that they will not be surprised from behind.
Through encounters with other survivors brutal, desperate or pathetic, the father and son are both hardened and sustained by their will, their hard-won survivalist savvy, and most of all by their love for each other. They struggle over mountains, navigate perilous roads and forests reduced to ash and cinders, endure killing cold and freezing rainfall. Passing through charred ghost towns and ransacking abandoned markets for meager provisions, the pair battle to remain hopeful. They seek the most rudimentary sort of salvation. However, in The Road, such redemption as might be permitted by their circumstances depends on the boy’s ability to sustain his own instincts for compassion and empathy in opposition to his father’s insistence upon their mutual self-interest and survival at all physical and moral costs.
The Road was the winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. ([source][1])
'La carretera' es la historia de supervivencia y viaje de un padre y su hijo cuyos nombres y edades desconocemos en un mundo arrasado por un evento no especificado.
Emotivo, duro y frío. Tan frío que atraviesa las páginas.
'La carretera' es la historia de supervivencia y viaje de un padre y su hijo cuyos nombres y edades desconocemos en un mundo arrasado por un evento no especificado.
Emotivo, duro y frío. Tan frío que atraviesa las páginas.
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.
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.
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.
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 …
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 shock al que estemos sometidos. Hoy es la amenaza de una guerra nuclear, ayer fue una pandemia. Mañana, ya se verá. El hijo de la novela, el niño, es para el padre una epifanía que da sentido a su necesidad de seguir. Su mera existencia, el milagro que es que algo tan hermoso exista, supone una esperanza viva, la promesa de una trascendencia más real que toda la lógica terrible de un mundo moribundo, que vierte sobre ellos, página tras página, oscuridad. Transitan una carretera, arrastrando sus pocas pertenencias en un carrito, con la vaga esperanza de encontrar gente como ellos. Pero la carretera es asolada por merodeadores, ladrones sin escrúpulos, o peor, canívales que consumen la carne de los incautos que, como ellos, viajan desorientados. Y como todos se esconden y desconfían los unos de los otros, parece que están solos contra los señores de la guerra que, en los estertores de su civilización, los cosechan para devorarlos. Es un libro bello y terrible. Se le tacha a veces de monótono en su implacable espanto, pero es un recurso al servicio de conectar al lector con la epopeya agónica del padre, con la épica, al fin y al cabo, de la lucha que entabla el hombre moderno contra la muerte. No usa guiones para los diálogos que son cortos y muy bien puestos. El lector no los necesita. Tampoco necesita saber qué ha ocurrido en realidad. Padre e hijo no dejan de decirse, de recordarse, con cada encuentro del que salen vivos, que ellos son los buenos, que son los portadores de un fuego, una llama que es la de la humanidad que no se ha apagado en ellos. El lector sabe que el niño, su fuego, es la civilización humana. Que mientras que haya un alma inocente como la suya jugando con un camión de juguete sobre la ceniza que cubre la carretera, el mundo entero estará a salvo y habrá esperanza. La película del 2009, con una excelente banda sonora de Nick Cave y Warren Ellis, es fiel, pero en la novela se adentra uno más en el interior de los personajes, quizá porque las imágenes son tan terribles que el formato visual shockea demasiado como para estar atento a lo verdaderamente importante de la narración: ese fuego interior que logran mantener vivo. No es extraño que Cormac McCarthy sea también el autor de “No es País para Viejos”, y es que ambas magníficas historias, en el fondo, hablan de lo mismo. De cómo el ser humano trasciende, generación tras generación,a la arbitrariedad, a la transitoriedad que nos somete la vida. Es una novela que nos habla a nosotros, de nosotros, de la manera que me gusta. De la que, cuando cierras, sabes que ha ayudado en algo, a ese fuego.
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 …
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 the setting, though. Something terrible has happened, and nobody really knows what.
All this to say that I get the dark, nasty world, and I delight in it. Your mileage may vary. As far as the writing goes, it's no airport book so if that's what you were hoping for what with the (terrible) movie adaptation and all, you'd better go read something else because this will probably not please you in the least.
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.
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 …
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 tell us who said what, no quotes it was difficult to follow any conversations.
3. This book was sloooow. I can usually plow through a slow book if it at least had some interesting bits but this book didn't. Not for me.
I guess I'll just have to stick to my Zombie books when it comes to Post-apocalyptic books. This book just was not my cup of tea. So my rating for this book is 2.5
I picked this up at a recommendation from a friend here in Edinburgh, and no, I haven't seen the movie. For those who haven't heard about it, the Road is a dystopia set in the recent future after some cataclysmic event has reduced modern society to rubble. As far as dystopian novels go, this one is just about right - McCarthy is able to offer the grit, grime, and violence of a failed society without offering an overly nihilistic portrait. Though it took a little bit of getting used to, McCarthy writes with a prose that is sparse and luminous, and this offers an intriguing contrast with the somewhat violent content of this book. It reminded me of Cold Mountain in terms of both prose and the way that prose was somewhat disjunct with the content of the narrative in an effective way. I'd recommend it, though set your presumptions …
I picked this up at a recommendation from a friend here in Edinburgh, and no, I haven't seen the movie. For those who haven't heard about it, the Road is a dystopia set in the recent future after some cataclysmic event has reduced modern society to rubble. As far as dystopian novels go, this one is just about right - McCarthy is able to offer the grit, grime, and violence of a failed society without offering an overly nihilistic portrait. Though it took a little bit of getting used to, McCarthy writes with a prose that is sparse and luminous, and this offers an intriguing contrast with the somewhat violent content of this book. It reminded me of Cold Mountain in terms of both prose and the way that prose was somewhat disjunct with the content of the narrative in an effective way. I'd recommend it, though set your presumptions aside first and just enjoy the book on its own terms.
Great book on the relationship between a father and his son. The book asks the basic question: "How do the parents protect and teach their children in a dangerous world"
