In 2006, Cormac McCarthy pulped a book about the end times. However you want to label it and say how this comes to be, he leaves that to you, but what he spins on the pages is a story of suspense, survival, and of finding hope in a place void of it.
The Road's two characters are a son and a father. The father is attempting to survive any way he can, and he never lets the son lose hope.
The Road follows suit with minimal punctuation and without proper names. The characters have no names, much like the Clint Eastwood character in the 70's. But this doesn't make them any less real or tangible. At the end of the novel, you feel like you have walked through the apocalypse with them.
This is not a horror book, but it does have some horrific scenes in it. I think what works the best, with horror, is when it is a subtle thing. One scene, in The Road, the two characters come across something terrible. This terribleness is not described in graphic detail, but the reader is given just enough to realize what is happening, and to realize the peril that the two protagonists are in. This is a good lesson to many of writers: sometimes the imagination can scare a person better than any printed word.
This Road is a quick read. It's not long and it isn't supposed to be. Everything that is in it is for a purpose, and there is no filler. At no point, in reading The Road, do you think: we're just wasting time here. Ever second is stacked with story, and every page filled with what it totally and completely necessary.
There's a reason why Cormac McCarthy is considered one of the best author's of this generation. His story weaving is something to breathe in deeply. The Road is a great start if you haven't read McCarthy before.
The Road was the 2007's winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
0 comments:
Post a Comment