Cormac McCarthy: The Road (novel)

Cormac McCarthy: American novelist, 20.7.1933-

The Road: novel, published in 2008

Wow! What a book! What a work of art, poetry and literature.

I am usually not keen on modern novels. Classic storytelling is more my thing, but this book, this is something different. A fellow worker of mine recommended me the book, even lended it to me. I don't know exactly why he wanted so much me to read it - maybe he thought it would interest me, because I had few times brought up the climate change on a coffee break. Well, the book lay two months on my table (they always do) and I finally read it last Cristmas. By the time I had finished Í felt shocked, sad and somehow purified and tears were running from my eyes. I felt purified, because of the wisdom of the author. Sad, because of the subject matter. And shocked because the book was so amazingly great, in a way I did not know was possible.

The book is written in modern style (you, my dear imaginary reader, can classify it more precisely), and there are very little actually happening in it. The story is about a father (referred as "he") and a son (referred as "boy"). They are wandering on the road in a future post-apocalypse world. Something has happened in the near past and destroyed almost all living from the face of the earth, but we are not told what has caused it and how vast exactly the demolition is. There are only few people left and two of them (or is there only one of them...), are the the main characters of the book: an unnamed man and his unnamed son.

Bicycle! Why don't they have a bicycle?! Nobody in the novel has a bicycle. There is even a truck, but no bicycle. He and the boy only have a bloody shopping cart, where all their personal property is stuffed. They wander along the road towards the south: trust no one, help no one nor ally anyone. Trees are dead, fish are dead, weed is dead and almost all people are dead or busy dying or killing or eating each other. The mother of the boy seems to have killed herself before.

Although there are not much visible events, the book seems to operate in dazzlingly many levels: it is an ecological novel, a description of father's and son's relationship, a study of human nature and human and nature, a poetic morality, and, it touches with a lightness of a feather the ideas of good and bad, God and faith and, in my personal interpration, there is also a strong message of never letting your inner child die. Kill the Man man in you, the Survivor, if you must, but never stop trusting people around you. Nobody has the strength to go on alone and you will find good people all around you, if you just let yourself face the world like child.

Blocker's Verdict: 5/5

Word of the day: climate change = Changes in the Earth's climate, especially those produced by global warming.