To celebrate the 200th review on Books, Time, and Silence, I will be re-posting 10 of my favourite reviews. On day two it is The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
Read: October 2007
The Road in one Tweet-sized chunk:
Sparse, understated. The Road is everything good in modern fiction.
They are nameless. The man and his son. But they are us all. Walking The Road because it is the only way they can go. Alone. Heading for the coast. A post-apocalyptic world enshrouding them. Ransacked. Gutted. Ash rain tumbling from the grey blanket that was once called the sky. Perpetual gloom.
It is always there. The threat. From armed cannibalistic gangs, from hunger, from loss of hope. Horror assaulting the eyes behind every corner. And the sun no more to be seen. “He looked at the sky out of old habit but there was nothing to see.”
Polluted. Now the earth is expunging life from itself. But they keep walking the road south, fleeing the winter they know they cannot survive. Sometimes he remembers the before, but those memories are fading. And he will not let himself dream. The boy never even knew the before. But he knows plenty about life.
“He turned and looked. He looked like he had been crying.
Just tell me.
We wouldn’t ever eat anybody, would we?
No. Of course not.
Even if we were starving?
We’re starving now.
You said we weren’t.
I said we weren’t dying. I didn’t say we weren’t starving.
But we wouldn’t?
No. We wouldn’t.
No matter what.
No. No matter what.
Because we’re the good guys.
Yes.
And we’re carrying the fire.
And we’re carrying the fire. Yes.
Okay.”
Sparse, understated. The Road is everything good in modern fiction. It may be bleak and desolate but through the gloom come little chinks of lights: it is life affirming, redemptive. You can taste the ash in the water, feel the gloom and almost reach out and touch the boys terror. It is immediate, visceral, omnipresent.
The Road warrants every acolade accorded it. It will undoubtedly become a global classic.
9 out of 10
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