Read this book: The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

The Road
Cormac McCarthy

I can say with almost 100% certainty that nothing scares me more than

1. the living dead
2. surviving the apocalypse

So I think it goes without saying that The Road scared the hell out of me. Of course, this technically isn’t a novel about zombies, but I think anyone who reads it can agree that McCarthy is writing about both of my biggest fears.

slow, but so persistent

What can I say about The Road that hasn’t already been said? Quite simply, it’s amazing. Utterly breathtaking, painfully bleak, The Road needs to be read. Unlike Blood Meridian (which I’m still toiling through) The Road is absolutely readable and impossible to put down, and I finished it in a few hours.

If you haven’t yet heard about this book (which would be quite a feat, with all the press its received in the past year), I’ll briefly recap the plot: an unnamed father and son travel south after some tragedy (never fully explained, but most likely nuclear in origin) has destroyed America, maybe even the entire world. There are, of course, survivors, and that is where the real fear comes in: the lucky ones died in the attack.

And yet, despite the hopeless landscape, The Road remains a hopeful novel. There will always be love, always something to fight for, even when there is nothing left at all.

In a nutshell: Yet another reminder (see Earth Abides, I am Legend) to kill myself if I happen to survive the coming apocalypse. Doing so is, of course, the very thing McCarthy argues against. Whatever. Better than being a legless captive slowly eaten by cannibals. Oh, the horror.

Bibliolatry Scale: 6 out of 6 stars