Tuesday, March 18, 2008

The Road

Having enjoyed the movie No Country For Old Men as much as I did, I decided to check out Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

It's the story of a father and son walking through a postapocalyptic America. It is quite a moving book. As the description on the back states this is "an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of". What would you do in a lawless society? Would you turn into a savage? Stick to a moral compass? Hopefully we will never had to make those types of decisions.

With few flashbacks to the pre apocalyptic world, the story concentrates on the moment by moment journey of the father and his young son as they work their way to the coast unaware of what will be there. McCarthy paints a dreary landscape with swirling and ever-present ash. The lack of sustenance coupled with human savagery, at times, is almost unbearable.

You follow along not knowing what the coast has in store for these two characters. What you're left with an example of love that has no bounds.

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