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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: $3.25
You Save: $11.70 (78%)
New (116) Used (218) Collectible (2) from $3.25
Avg. Customer Rating:  1566 reviews
Sales Rank: 169
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 287
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 4.8 x 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
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Amazon.com Review
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 1561 more reviews...
Miserable but Persistent October 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you're prone to hopelessness, this may not be the book for you. If you're the sort of person who goes to the worst case scenario, deals with that, and figures that any step up from that is an improvement, you might like this book. I did.
Some people keep fighting no matter what. They can't bring themselves to give up, no matter the size of the obstacle they face. For some people, they would rather go down fighting than give up. I didn't realize I was one of those people until I read this book. It's not a pleasant read, but it's one you will never forget or regret. Go for it.
 Masterpiece Masterpiece Masterpiece October 12, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
No hyperbole here: The Road is a Masterpiece of American 21st Century Fiction. A seminal book of Fatherhood, Survival, Post-Apocalyptic Awe and Dread, Post-Consumer-Culture Imagining and Natural, Geographical Description.
Terms like "Terribly Excellent," "Devastatingly Beautiful," "Awesome in it's Simplicity and Affections," all apply to this tale of travel and scavenging, of a father and son heading South in search of The Good Guys.
Though some may feel this is a depressing novel, it is the opposite in full effect. The Father's hopefulness, made and alive in his son is the stuff of grand, all encompassing love and sacrifice.
Do not expect to be wowed with McCarthy's capable verbal violence of past tales. Here the tension is great, as palpable as in any novel I've recently read, executed with such literate precision and skill.
That's enough. Read this ASAP. Don't wait for the movie, or let that be enough. A film won't get enough, it's source material is too good.
A masterpiece, a classic, a BEAUTIFUL, ENGROSSING, AMAZING WORK OF ART.
Relentlessly downbeat October 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Honestly I don't know quite how to process this story. For starters I couldn't finish it. I was crying too much. Maybe that's a testament to the power of the writing, but I just feel like this book was written to be as emotionaly jarring as possible.
Do we really need such a relentlessly downbeat story to teach us about the power of paternal love?
However, the fact that I had such an intense emotional reaction is evidence of the authors skill.
In general I am a fan of post-apocolyptic stories but I don't think that's really the point of this novel. It's really about love. And specifically the merciless love of a parent for their child. It excludes all others without pity or remorse.
Actually now that I think about it, I get it.
 Did I miss something? October 10, 2008
I still can't figure out what's so great about this book. I found it a bit bleak and very uneventful. Why couldn't there have been some more cannibalism?
5 stars versus ANYTHING (except maybe the Bible) October 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a literary work of art by one of the greatest living authors. The subject matter can be dark, but for those giving it anything less than 5 stars... I guess those folks really need to do some homework.
Why am I reviewing it? This book is the single GREATEST Father's Day gift for a man with a child (especially a son) that I can possibly imagine. THAT is what this book is about, regardless of whether its sci-fi or lo-fi. It is a portrayal of father and son.
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