THE ROAD -- Cormac McCarthy

Alfred A. Knopf -- hc
New York -- ©2006 -- 241pp
ISBN: 0-307-26543-9

A man and his son wander along the road in search of ... anything ... in a bleak apocalyptic world.

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This was an incredibly depressing novel.

Set in the not-too-distant future, with the earth (as far as we know) covered by a cloud of ash (presumably from destructive nuclear bombs), a man and his son wander, seeking merely to exist.

Cannibalism among the few survivors we meet, is rampant, with people eating their newly born children.

The boy .. about eight to ten years old ... is constantly seeking reminder that they are the good people, in search of other good people. His father assures him that is the case, but by the end of the book, the boy begins to see that his father's own distrust of anyone and everyone around has put them in a position somewhere between the good and the bad people.

The boy never loses hope or his identity of being good, and that is the ONLY aspect of this novel that offers any sense of goodness or promise. Unfortunately, it is not enough, and it comes too late. My sense of unease and disgust had already taken over.

The storytelling itself was crisp and sharp and kept me reading, even when I felt filthy and disgusted at what I was reading.

Perhaps it's because I am a father, with boys that age, that I could put myself there. I could understand everything the father said and did. And although the father comes off, finally, as perhaps too distrustful, he was acting the only way a father could act in that situation.

And just what the hell is up with books that seem to bear "literary merit" (let's not get me started on that discussion again) that they don't feel the need to follow the rules of punctuation anymore?! More and more I find that books are often considered to have "literary" merit when they break convention. Frankly, I think it's bullshit. Capitalize the first letters at the beginnings of sentences! Use quotation marks when someone is speaking! It's the right thing to do!

I could not read this book at night because it left me feeling so uncomfortable. Certainly the author's ability to move me so thoroughly speaks highly of his talent, but I did not enjoy being moved in this way.

I just can't recommend this novel.