The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I’m not a big fan of fiction in general, nor do I readily jump on the bandwagon, so it was a little out of character for me to read The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

I wasn’t disappointed.

It was engaging from the first line to the last and kept me hooked on every page. The writing is sparse like the landscape that the father and son travel on their way to the ocean; a post-apocalyptic pilgrimage to a would-be Mecca.

Even parts of speech were deemed unnecessary as the entire book is devoid of quotation marks, although there is substantial, if oft-mono-syllabic dialogue. Words like don’t become dont and I was left wondering: how cool, does he get away with that breach of protocol because its absence adds to the barren landscape of the ashen world?

I guess so, he did win a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for it.

I’m a big fan of zombie movies and stuff like Mad Max and The Road by Cormac McCarthy is now at the top of my list of recommendations. What propels this book into great literature is the fact that it boils down to a moral tale of a father trying to teach his son about good and evil in a world seemingly devoid of the former.

It’s a fast read and definitely worth the time!

cw