The Road
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Review
A work of such terrible beauty that you will struggle to look away -- --Tom Gatti, The Times<br /><br />I could only take short bursts of it in Degas's rasping, downbeat delivery, but I had to keep going back to it. The completeness of this vision of post-apocalyptic desolation is brilliantly imagined --Karen Robinson, The Sunday Times<br /><br />You will read on, absolutely convinced, thrilled, mesmerised. --Alan Warner, The Guardian<br /><br />The conspiratorial, undramatic narration heightens the impact of this powerful and chilling vision of a post-apocalyptic America. Father and son struggle to survive in a ruined environment by feeding off the leavings of the dead. Sounds depressing, but is compelling and strangely beautiful. --Rachel Redford, The Observer<br /><br />Rupert Degas is the most versatile of narrators: he excels in Haruki Murakami and was Pantalaimon in Philip Pullman's multivoiced Northern Lights. Chill menace is his forte, so when you turn on his narration of Cormac McCarthy's The Road get ready to turn into a hypnotised rabbit. --Christina Hardyment, The Times
This gripping, suspenseful novel will be hard to turn off - even by listeners with no or very little interest in the sci-fi genre. The Road begins in the late fall sometime in the future after catastrophe of horrible proportions has struck the continent. Two survivors, a man and his son, are traveling in a southerly direction. Are they seeking a warmer climate? Are they escaping from marauding bandits? Are they trying to locate other survivors? The pair carry their possessions in a grocery cart. The abandoned towns and cities are covered with a coating of gray ash. The forests contain the charred remains of bushes and trees. They subsist on what they can glean from abandoned houses, barns, and fields. Due to past experiences, they purposely avoid any contact with other people. Were they concerned about deadly contagious disease? robbery? murder? some kind of communicable radiation sickness? As the story progresses, the man becomes seriously ill and finally dies. The boy, of undetermined age, is left alone. Does he survive? Violence is minimal but a sense of doom pervades the story. Narrator Rupert Degas is superb. His deep, whispery, almost ominous tone further enhances this riveting tale of survival in the face of utter hopelessness. He gives each character a distinct voice that is appropriate for the situation. The abridging editor also deserves high marks for maintaining the storyline yet forcing the listener to fill in the blanks, all of which made this a step above a run-of-the-mill sci-fi novel experience. Violence is minimal but a sense of doom pervades the story. --Soundcommentary.com
Rupert Degas is the most versatile of narrators: he excels in Haruki Murakami and was Pantalaimon in Philip Pullman's multivoiced Northern Lights. Chill menace is his forte, so when you turn on his narration of Cormac McCarthy's The Road get ready to turn into a hypnotised rabbit. --Christina Hardyment, The Times --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
This gripping, suspenseful novel will be hard to turn off - even by listeners with no or very little interest in the sci-fi genre. The Road begins in the late fall sometime in the future after catastrophe of horrible proportions has struck the continent. Two survivors, a man and his son, are traveling in a southerly direction. Are they seeking a warmer climate? Are they escaping from marauding bandits? Are they trying to locate other survivors? The pair carry their possessions in a grocery cart. The abandoned towns and cities are covered with a coating of gray ash. The forests contain the charred remains of bushes and trees. They subsist on what they can glean from abandoned houses, barns, and fields. Due to past experiences, they purposely avoid any contact with other people. Were they concerned about deadly contagious disease? robbery? murder? some kind of communicable radiation sickness? As the story progresses, the man becomes seriously ill and finally dies. The boy, of undetermined age, is left alone. Does he survive? Violence is minimal but a sense of doom pervades the story. Narrator Rupert Degas is superb. His deep, whispery, almost ominous tone further enhances this riveting tale of survival in the face of utter hopelessness. He gives each character a distinct voice that is appropriate for the situation. The abridging editor also deserves high marks for maintaining the storyline yet forcing the listener to fill in the blanks, all of which made this a step above a run-of-the-mill sci-fi novel experience. Violence is minimal but a sense of doom pervades the story. --Soundcommentary.com
Rupert Degas is the most versatile of narrators: he excels in Haruki Murakami and was Pantalaimon in Philip Pullman's multivoiced Northern Lights. Chill menace is his forte, so when you turn on his narration of Cormac McCarthy's The Road get ready to turn into a hypnotised rabbit. --Christina Hardyment, The Times --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
Waterstone's Book Quarterly
'Both terrifying and beautiful, it is about...the best and worst
of humankind...[it's] impossible to recommend it too highly.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
of humankind...[it's] impossible to recommend it too highly.' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
158 of 168 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I picked this up after reading a glowing review in the press. I'm completely new to Cormac McCarthy having never read any of his other works. I have to say this is a superb book.
The book is set in a post-apocalyptic future. Though it's never stated what exactly happened, the subtext suggests a nuclear winter following a war. The earth is burnt, all vegetation is dead and it rains and snows ash. The plot follows the journey of a man and his son towards the south in order to find somewhere they can do more than just survive. But as all food has now been plundered - this being several years since the disaster - they are always on the edge of starvation. They must travel without being seen, as most of humanity that is left has long since resorted to cannibalism to survive.
What this is really about though is the extraordinary relationship between man and boy. The lengths that the man will go to protect his son and see him through the other end. It is a novel that for all its darkness is full of love. And wow is this dark. Many authors have written about the end of the world/survival but I don't think I've read anything quite this bleak. The scenery is utterly symapathetic to the couple's plight. It is filled with an overpowering poignancy for things lost - birds, cows, blue seas.
This is a very sad but at the same time uplifting book. The language used is simple and the conversational parts between man and boy are deliberately kept short. A wonderful book that I couldn't put down until I'd finished.
The book is set in a post-apocalyptic future. Though it's never stated what exactly happened, the subtext suggests a nuclear winter following a war. The earth is burnt, all vegetation is dead and it rains and snows ash. The plot follows the journey of a man and his son towards the south in order to find somewhere they can do more than just survive. But as all food has now been plundered - this being several years since the disaster - they are always on the edge of starvation. They must travel without being seen, as most of humanity that is left has long since resorted to cannibalism to survive.
What this is really about though is the extraordinary relationship between man and boy. The lengths that the man will go to protect his son and see him through the other end. It is a novel that for all its darkness is full of love. And wow is this dark. Many authors have written about the end of the world/survival but I don't think I've read anything quite this bleak. The scenery is utterly symapathetic to the couple's plight. It is filled with an overpowering poignancy for things lost - birds, cows, blue seas.
This is a very sad but at the same time uplifting book. The language used is simple and the conversational parts between man and boy are deliberately kept short. A wonderful book that I couldn't put down until I'd finished.
65 of 70 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Don't start with any illusions of this book - it isn't a story. There isn't a beginning and a middle and a neat end. The plot does not develop in any significant way. What you get is a ride of pure emotion, that is of an intensity that I've not really seen matched anywhere else. This isn't a tale about the end of the world. This is what it looks like at the end of the world, what it sounds and smells like, and more importantly what it feels like when you are man and boy facing death and the extinction of the species.
Cormac uses words sparingly, and doesn't bother with a lot of punctuation or structure. It's almost modern narrative poetry, as per Bukowski et al. This makes it a more challenging read, but he drags you in, relentlessly. It is very bleak, it is very difficult, but he makes it work. I'm not going to give examples because it's worth finding out for yourself.
I read this almost entirely at night, in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere in Devon, with everyone else asleep. And every night I went to bed drained by the experience of another chapter or so. If a book can move you to this degree, then what else can it be than a five stars?
Cormac uses words sparingly, and doesn't bother with a lot of punctuation or structure. It's almost modern narrative poetry, as per Bukowski et al. This makes it a more challenging read, but he drags you in, relentlessly. It is very bleak, it is very difficult, but he makes it work. I'm not going to give examples because it's worth finding out for yourself.
I read this almost entirely at night, in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere in Devon, with everyone else asleep. And every night I went to bed drained by the experience of another chapter or so. If a book can move you to this degree, then what else can it be than a five stars?
200 of 221 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
If you like your fiction to have an equitable balance of light and shade, peopled by a galaxy of interesting characters and interspersed with humour and social interaction, then The Road is certainly not for you. However, to cast this book aside would be to miss one of the most extraordinary feats of imaginative world painting in modern literature. McCarthy's subject is as bleak as it is possible to imagine: a post apocalyptic planet Earth in perpetual nuclear winter where the landscape is dead or dying covered in a ubiquitous black ash slowly choking and silencing every living thing. It is a world without sun, animals, and plants where a few humans scavenge to survive abandoning all compassion and morality to do so. Amidst this nightmare a father and his son are found trekking across the wasteland of the United States heading for the coast hoping to find something in a world where hope has ceased to exist. It is their story which holds our attention: amidst the endless desolation and as they battle to survive, McCarthy explores the doubts, suspicions, loyalties and trade offs which typify any filial bond with enormous sensitivity and perception. Yet this pair must face questions unlikely to have been faced by many in any era: what is the point of life when the world as we know it is just a disappearing memory in the mind of a father whose son knows only a world of emptiness? Why try to survive when there is no chance of life being sustained over the long term? Ultimately they find purpose in their own inter-dependence wherein they learn to find all meaning and incentive. This subject is not a new one of course, but what makes The Road so compelling is the author's ability to create this grey, desolate world with such sustained authority and conviction: never once does the curtain of illusion fall, not for a second is the spell broken: we walk the endless highways of nothingness, we ponder where the next can of food might be found, we share the fear that round the next corner might be a marauding armed gang ready to kill for a bottle of water. Beginning from a canvas painted with almost photographic realism, the writer affords his subject an almost allegorical form in order to ponder the philosophical issues raised by the annihilation of the earth and the consideration of what it means to live without expectation of a future. Written in shorn down, skeletal prose with not a single redundant phrase, McCarthy has created an unforgettable and profoundly moving meditation on what it is to be human in a world almost beyond the comprehension of mankind. A stunning achievement.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Hugely powerful
Undoubtedly one of the most powerful novels I have ever read, although it may well appeal most to fathers who have sons. Read more
Published 1 month ago by JOD
@kindlescout recommendation
'Sampling Kindle so you don't have to', Twitter @kindlescout trawls for low cost high quality fiction on Kindle, and recommends 'The Road', simply for its good writing.
Published 1 month ago by Atlantic
A father's love
Travels of a man and boy in post-apocalyptic America, their goal being the coast and warmer weather. Read more
Published 1 month ago by JoTownhead
father and son in a post-apocalyptic world
I found this something of a chore, to be honest; the writing style didn't keep me focussed, especially for the first hundred pages or so. Read more
Published 1 month ago by sally tarbox
bleakly beautiful
Sparsely written, like the world it describes, The Road paints a bleak picture of a dying world lit by the hope of a man and his son. Fantastic.
Published 1 month ago by Stewart Cutler
pointless
With all the hype surrounding it, I was expecting this book to be something very special indeed. I was sadly disappointed. Read more
Published 2 months ago by lesharris
Emotional
I couldn't put this book down. I loved how the writer described the relationship between the father and son throughout. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Reader
Bleak, but impossible to put down
Terribly bleak throughout, but I found it a fascinating read that I just could not put down. It is written in an unusual way - no speach marks etc - but once you get past that,... Read more
Published 2 months ago by AvidReader
Oppressive, Dark, Draining & Compelling
Never read any Cormac McCarthy before, not sure what persuaded me to read this one, but so glad I did. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Revolutionary
Amazing
I don't write reviews very often, but I was compelled to in this case. This book is fantastic in every way. Read more
Published 3 months ago by James
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