The Road

Fiction again this month for the student services blog...

The Road is not an easy read (and probably the exact wrong sort of book for me to be reading in the mood I've been in lately), but it came highly recommended by a number of different people and it's in the libraries' collection.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

"Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world" (3)

The Road is a spare, but powerful book. In a post-apocalyptic future (in the post-apocalyptic near future?), a father and son are traveling through a ravaged American landscape -- "barren, silent, godless" -- trying to reach the coast. What, if anything, remains there is unknown. It is only the journey, and their love for each other, that keeps the two alive.

As depressing and hard to read as it is, the novel strangely compelling. McCarthy's writing is poetic, his observations on human nature insightful and profound. Despairing, but at the same time hopeful, The Road is a book that you won't soon forget.