The Road

While my first attempt at reading McCarthy was sort of disappointing, I have to say that The Road delivered. The Road is Cormac McCarthy's most recent book, published in 2006, and follows an unnamed father and son duo as they struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Don't let that "post-apocalyptic" part fool you, the book is not sci-fi at all. It's really a gripping tale of survival in the face of hopelessness. Whatever the apocalypse was goes unexplained, but there are a few clues scattered throughout- charred corpses are found at random, and a thin layer of ash seems to have caked the Earth. The man and the boy are venturing south, the only reason given being "we won't survive another winter up here." They meet few characters, and the ones who do pop up only stick around for a few pages. It makes me wonder how they got so many people in the recent movie adaptation- Viggo Mortensen as the man, some child actor as the boy, Charlize Theron as the mother (who appears only in flashbacks), but Robert Duvall and Guy Pearce must have taken some bit parts because there's really not much else. The story is focused on the man and his son- travelling and foraging. Their conversations are what really made the book so great- they're so simple and realistic, but perfectly drove home the characters- the innocence but sporadic pessimism of the boy, and the way the father is really only pushing forward to find some sort of decent life for his son. The story here is simple, and wasn't loaded with symbolism like Blood Meridian, making it a much more accessible read. It won't take you too long to get through either, so definitely give The Road a shot.