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The Road (Oprah's Book Club)
by: Cormac McCarthy

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Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307387899
ISBN: 0307387895
Label: Vintage Books
Manufacturer: Vintage Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 287
Publication Date: March 28, 2007
Publisher: Vintage Books
Release Date: March 28, 2007
Studio: Vintage Books
Sales Rank: 47

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.com:
Best known for his Border Trilogy, hailed in the San Francisco Chronicle as "an American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century," Cormac McCarthy has written ten rich and often brutal novels, including the bestselling No Country for Old Men, and The Road. Profoundly dark, told in spare, searing prose, The Road is a post-apocalyptic masterpiece, one of the best books we've read this year, but in case you need a second (and expert) opinion, we asked Dennis Lehane, author of equally rich, occasionally bleak and brutal novels, to read it and give us his take. Read his glowing review below. --Daphne Durham

Guest Reviewer: Dennis Lehane

Dennis Lehane, master of the hard-boiled thriller, generated a cult following with his series about private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, wowed readers with the intense and gut-wrenching Mystic River, blew fans all away with the mind-bending Shutter Island, and switches gears with Coronado, his new collection of gritty short stories (and one play).

Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehane

Product Description:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER
National Book Critic's Circle Award Finalist

A New York Times Notable Book
One of the Best Books of the Year
The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times, New York, People, Rocky Mountain News, Time, The Village Voice, The Washington Post

The searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- "Run, he whispered. Run."
This is the first book that I have read by McCarthy. I don't really know why, I just had this idea that I wasn't going to like his work very much. Something that I heard once about All the Pretty Horses struck me the wrong way. I am not sure what it was that I thought that I wouldn't like.

In any case, I bought The Road because a co-worker was convinced that I would love the book. And he was right, I do-- although "love" is a funny kind of word to relate to post-apocalyptic fiction.

What do you need to know about this book before you read it? Nothing much beyond what almost everyone knows. This is a story about a man and a boy, set in a post-apocalyptic USA. We aren't told what happened, and all question of "why" has fallen away.

There's a lot of things ... Read More

Rating:

- Incredible novel!
As I read this dark tale, I felt as if I were walking down that same road and it was a terrifying trip. I don't want to be around if and when something like this happens to this planet.

You owe it to yourself to read this masterpiece!

Rating:

- Mr. McCarthy needs some serious meds
What a sad state of affairs when all someone as talented as this guy is with words can come up with is this bleakscape of a novel that goes nowhere, adds nothing to our understanding of what life is, and forces the reader to pitch this manic depressive tell all into the fireplace and go out and build a few new nuclear power plants. This is just more of the humans are the devil and the earth would be better off without us silliness. Cormac, please take some of your money that these poor folks who thnk this is 'deep stuff' spend on this self flagellation of yours and get some therapy. Human life is a really joyful thing and please try to lift folks up with your considerable talent with words. That would be a considerable contribution instead of this suicidal morass you seem to live in.

Rating:

- A very dark, terrifying and touching experience
I didn't really know what to expect from this book and it took me a little while to get into it. The read is very easy and keeps you turning the pages. It's the kind of book that you look at the clock and suddenly it's 3AM. Some of the scenes are shocking and beautifully written at the same time. I had a little trouble sleeping after some scenes just because the terror feels so real. The protaganist is the only one whose thoughts we can hear and it drew me in completely. The book only gets better as it goes along and the ending is just perfect. It's amazing. I mean really amazing. I loved it.

Rating:

- "...being from a planet that no longer existed..."
This is a beautiful and surprising account of a father and son - a journey of absolute endings. There are no wasted words or efforts. The language and the story are concise. The world has been destroyed; nature is burned to a crisp; the few humans that are left are scattered and not to be trusted. This father and his son are moving away from winter's coming trying to find a warmer place - nothing is considered safe - and finding food is chancy at best. I started this book and read through it in two days - not wanting to stop or put it down. I was heart broken several times in the book as the little boy becomes older and wiser than typical for his age just by observing the world. Random moments: When the two enter a house and draw a gun on their own reflections in the mirror not knowing ... Read More

Books : The Road (Oprah's Book Club)