Quote:
The Road
Cormac McCarthy
A man and his son journey south in the dim hope of finding some means of keeping them selves alive in a world in which nearly all living things are dead or dying.
Beautifully written. The sparse short sentences and short punchy descriptions almost mirror the gray, dead, desolate world they describe. The sense of place it evokes captured my imagination and there was just enough action to keep my interest which might have waned had the whole thing been about them foraging for food in the wreckage.
I was really liking it right up until the ending which I felt was a cop out.
I just finished this. I think this is going to become a common text for literary criticism and analysis of literary devices in many Univeristy 3rd and 4th year lit courses in the future.
I really enjoyed the book, for the most part. The sentence structure reminded me Hemingway's style, and the narration reminded me of some of Faulkner's work. I too was disappointed with the ending, but overall the book has a lot of depth for study.
The interesting thing about this is that an 8 year old could read it and understand it, a high school or college grad could enjoy it, and an English major with an interest in analysis could take it to a whole different level and have a field day with so many elements of the book.
PS. The first two sentences of the book must have been intentionally odd. If I wrote the following, my lit profs would have put "awk" on both sentences:
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping besdie him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before.
I quickly realized I wasn't reading Ludlum , Patterson, etc (lol), and got used to the style pretty quickly. It reminded me that I have to get back into some serious books that I have been meaning to read....