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The Road (Oprah's Book Club) | 
 enlarge | Author: Cormac Mccarthy
Publisher: Vintage Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $2.50
You Save: $12.45 (83%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1445 reviews
Sales Rank: 44
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 287
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0307387895
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307387899
ASIN: 0307387895
Publication Date: March 28, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Softcover: ex-lib w stamps, pages and wraps good
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Amazon.com
Best known for his Border Trilogy, hailed in the San Francisco Chronicle as "an American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century," Cormac McCarthy has written ten rich and often brutal novels, including the bestselling No Country for Old Men, and The Road. Profoundly dark, told in spare, searing prose, The Road is a post-apocalyptic masterpiece, one of the best books we've read this year, but in case you need a second (and expert) opinion, we asked Dennis Lehane, author of equally rich, occasionally bleak and brutal novels, to read it and give us his take. Read his glowing review below. --Daphne Durham
Guest Reviewer: Dennis Lehane
 Dennis Lehane, master of the hard-boiled thriller, generated a cult following with his series about private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, wowed readers with the intense and gut-wrenching Mystic River, blew fans all away with the mind-bending Shutter Island, and switches gears with Coronado, his new collection of gritty short stories (and one play).
Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehane
Product Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER
National Book Critic's Circle Award Finalist
A New York Times Notable Book
One of the Best Books of the Year
The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times, New York, People, Rocky Mountain News, Time, The Village Voice, The Washington Post
The searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-—and each other.
The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1440 more reviews...
 A masterpiece July 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I haven't read for pleasure in several years due to my hectic lifestyle. However this novel was highly recommended to me from several friends, so I thought I would just skim through the pages.
Less than two chapters in, I was simply amazed by such literature and detail that McCarthy entails. A true classic that will be treasured for years.
Bleak and Inspiring July 2, 2008
Although I found this book to be depressing and miserable, I couldn't put it down. It has left its mark on me as one of the most memorable books I have ever read. If you are a writer, there is so much to be learned from reading a book of this quality. Thankyou Cormac McCarthy.
 NOT a book for the clinically depressed! July 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am a HUGE Cormac McCarthy fan. I've read many of his works so I know well his often dark subject matter. However this is, in my opinion, by far the darkest. I completely agree with s.j.'s earlier assessment; it is exactly like 'falling down a deep, dark hole'. Most likely because this stark and morose book offers little hope for humanity. BUT, I am glad I read it...bleak as it may be. Certainly not a read for everyone though. If you are already on depression meds--stay away!
The best book I've read in a decade. July 1, 2008
This is the first book I've read by Cormak McCarthy, and I have to say it ranks among the greats of American literature. I'd say he has the power of DeLillo and the edge of Pahlaniuk. This is simply the best book I've read in a decade.
Many years ago, Primo Levi's "Survival and Auschwitz" was the most bleak book I had read, telling of the best and worst of the human condition. It stayed with me for years. This book was even more bleak and more impactfull, and that strikes me as a most impressive feat considering that this is pure fiction, unlike Levi's biographical account.
I am a bit of an apocalypse nut, reading and watching as many accounts of the end of it all as I can get my masochistic little hand son. This book projects far past anything that I've read or seen. Humanity is on its last legs, and there is really no hope for it to make it. Though hope is very much what this book leaves you with.
I won't say as much as many more thorough reviews have, but this is truly a masterpiece of American literature. It is not for the feint of heart, however, and just describing events to my sister had her in tears. Read this if you really want to see what a nuclear winter will be like, and if you really want to cut to the core of what a father/son relationship is all about.
Cormac's best? June 30, 2008
My introduction to Cormac McCarthy was ALL THE PRETTY HORSES which I found dense and difficult to read. I was surprised to see this on the Oprah Book list because of its darker nature and because I would not think that the Oprah club would be into such a thing. Obviously, I sold them short.
There's a lot of Biblical allusions in this book, like in other McCarthy books. Some of them, especially those that involved the character Ely, reminded me of A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWOTZ. Recently, Michael Chabon (wiriter of WONDER BOYS and THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH) defended McCarthy's book, proclaiming that it was not merely "science fiction." I found this odd, as it was another tie-in to A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWOTZ. My copy has a forward, and though I can't remember who wrote it, it argued that CANTICLE was literature, and not just cheap sci-fi. Why do people always trash sci-fi?
Post-apocolyptic, its a dark story compelte with cannibals. I think a lot of people might have a hard time with the book at first because the writing style is so... bold? There's little punctuation, and no quotation marks. You really need to be paying attention as you read. And maybe that's the point. A lot of authors are writing like that these days.
Check out the movie. They filmed a good bit of it at my friend's hosue here in Zelienople. I love NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, hopefully THE ROAD will be just as good!
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