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| The Road | 
 enlarge | Author: Cormac Mccarthy
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £2.42
You Save: £5.57 (70%)
New (29) from £2.83
Avg. Customer Rating:  225 reviews
Sales Rank: 224
Media: Paperback
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0330447548
EAN: 9780330447546
ASIN: 0330447548
Publication Date: June 1, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Tell us why! November 27, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
If you are one of those people that needs to know the answers to questions then this is NOT the book for you. I couldn't get into this book as questions were raised but never answered. Maybe that was the idea and I've missed the point entirely. I just found it incredibly difficult to read. The lack of speech marks made it difficult to tell who was talking at times meaning whole scenes became confused and disjoined. And I didn't like that way the main characters were stripped of any identity as they were never given names. The only thing that kept me reading to the end was the hope that I might get some answers as to what has happened to the Earth, obviously a hugely catastophic disaster, but how, why, who???? I persevered to the end . . . then wished I hadn't bothered!
 No more water but the fire next time November 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Quote after quote, snippets of eulogy one after the other, proliferate across the back cover, inside covers and the long lead in to this book. All the heavyweights, the broadsheets but Time Out and the Big Issue too, lunge in. Everywhere there is `terrifying', `thrilling', `beautiful', nightmare', `amazing', `spectacular', `emotionally shattering' - `a masterpiece that will soon be considered a classic'. Buffeted by the sustained force of such prior judgements, I find myself coming to such books with an unease that I may not engage or find myself moved. If it's good enough for Kirsty Wark, maybe it's too good for me.
But I did find this a compelling read. Without chapters but presented in small chunks, this structure projected the despairing tone, the unchanging and relentless pattern of the days, and the dread that the few flickers of humanity surviving the unnamed apocalyptic event that has befallen the world could have no longer term future.
The two characters, almost the only two to appear in the book, are without names, a father and his son, pushing a broken down supermarket trolley containing their only possessions along roads frequently clogged with ash. In fact, in amongst sustained and beautiful prose, the wind blown ash and the tarp under which they shelter, recur over and over. With the whole world seemingly burned, broken and stripped bare, the poetic context of the writing pushes these entities to the fore, reflecting the deeply human propensity to build a sense of order, security and predictability in even the most hostile of circumstances.
It is writing of a very high order that can grab a reader and make him or her care so strongly about two people who have no names, no history to speak of, and little to do with their days than push on down `the road' in the vague belief that things may be better at its end. The conversation between these two is sparse but as the novel proceeds the reader builds an intimacy with them through witnessing their brief exchanges in the face of terrror, annihilation, hope and the construction of a sense of purpose and morality.
There are a couple of brief moments in this book of sheer horror centring around the deterioration of many survivors into cannibalism and its associated violence and wickedness. But the writing is subtle and menace is also conveyed by images such as the wing mirror attached to the wonky trolley in an attempt to give some prior warning of threats from behind.
Does this book hold out any hope? Is it ultimately, if only even narrowly, redemptive, as some of its reviewers suggest? I would advise others to read this majestic and totally absorbing novel and then ponder deeply such fundamental questions.
Soul wrenching, moving, haunting - Stunning. November 26, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This was the second Cormac book I read, the first being No Country for Old Men. Nothing prepared me, including Cormacs previous work, for the shear magnitude of dread or emotion this book emoted from me at every page.
I finished this book last year and it still evokes feelings in me. I cannot recommend this enough, although I wouldn't read it around the Christmas period, it might take the shine off the Yule tide celebrations.
"Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it." - The Road by Cormac McCarthy
 Harrowing yet compelling November 24, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
An unnamed man and his son travel south in a desolate charred landscape, the aftermath of some unnamed apocalyptic disaster, hoping to find some escape from the horrors that have become their daily struggle for survival. We know nothing about them other than what little we learn as they travel; we deduce for example that the boy must be very young; we come to realise that they consider themselves the "good guys", and that out there somewhere there are also the "bad guys".
It is a harrowing tale, and while not a vast novel it does seem after a while that there is going to be little relief from their constant search for food and the struggle against starvation. Yet one is compelled to stick with them as they cling to some distant hope. For despite all the apparent despair the boy (for that is what he is called), shines as a model of morality and compassion; while his father tries hard to live up to his son's expectations of him.
It is a story told with great economy, matched by the succinctness of the dialogue between father and son. But what makes the story so compelling is that we are quickly drawn to man and boy, the obvious love and trust the two share, that we have to keep with them ever sharing their forlorn hope.
Beautifully crafted November 24, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
It's easy to see why this book won a pulizer prize. Written in an unusual style, as if told as a story to someone. Not having read anything else by Cormac McCarthy, I'm unable to tell if this is his normal style of writing.
That said, I can see this book becoming a classic, something that is read and studied by students. It has that mornful feeling to it. It's a book about survival and hope.
You can only imagine what has happened to the world throughout the book. Some sort of cataclysmic event that has effected to the world. The scary thing is that it could quite easily happen.
The book didn't scare me as much as the Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, but it appeared to have come from the same vein of writing. I'm glad I read it although I can easily see that it would not appeal to everyone.
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