Just finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy and even though this book’s been around for almost a year and a half, has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and has even been selected for Oprah’s book club (prompting the famously-reclusive McCarthy to give his first ever TV interview), I just wanted to share my thoughts on it before the residue from the experience of reading it leaves me.

This is a powerful, bleak and ultimately beautiful book that, if you really let the words reach you, it will stay with you for some time after you’ve turn the last page.  McCarthy’s prose, always sparse, here transforms into poetry as he describes the barren and lifeless landscapes and the trials faced by the protagonists.

For those who don’t know the plot, it’s the story of a journey taken by a man and his son across a post-apocalyptic America where there’s no life left outside the roving band of cannibals and occasional refugee.  The cause of the devastation is never revealed, and it’s really not important to the story.  What is important is the bond shared by the father and son in spite of the absolute hopelessness of their situation.  Throughout their miserable trek the father does everything and anything he can to protect his son and keep him alive against all odds, evading capture, scavenging for food and shelter and always pushing onwards.  Having a young son myself, I was particularly touched by this and could not help but identify with the father’s plight as he struggled to provide for his son.

This is not a long book and if you can stand reading something that is brutal and hopeless yet ultimately beautiful, then I can’t recommend it enough.  It is one of those things that you won’t be able to easily get out of your head.