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Date Posted: 15:31:27 05/07/07 Mon
Author: Lynx
Subject: Books of Doom, Part 1

I've read two apocalyptic books recently; one fiction, one nonfiction. Since I'm likely to blather on more about the nonfiction one, I'll confine this post to the other.

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, Vintage International, $14.95

Soon after I started reading it, this book won the Pulitzer fiction prize. More importantly (not), it was an Oprah pick. I know I've expressed my personal aversion to Oprah-anointed literature, but I really wanted to read this one. Fortunately, they no longer actually stamp the Oprah seal into the cover, opting for stickers instead, so I was able to de-Oprahfy it before I even left the bookstore parking lot. :-)

Several years after a global nuclear apocalypse, a father and his young son are on a journey to the coast, we know not why. They have a shopping cart with a few scavenged provisions, and they have a gun with only a few bullets left. There are no animals, no plants, no birds, and when snow falls, it is grey. What is left of humanity has, for the most part, declined into savage cannibalism, so their journey is fraught with danger.

This tale is relentlessly grim, with much violence and many disturbing images. For the first half of the book, I had to force myself to read it in fifteen minute segments, often telling Mr. Lynx that I didn't know if I'd be able to finish it. At the halfway point, I reached the can't-put-it-down stage.

The prose is spare and almost biblical, yet the voice is lyric and true. The lack of exposition is often annoying, but always purposeful. We never know the characters names, just "the man" and "the boy," and we learn little about their lives previous to this journey, because these things are no longer relevant. It provides abundant food for thought: Is hope hardwired into us? Is religion? Who are the "good guys"? To what degree can love sustain us? And on and on.

I loved it. I hated it. I'm glad I read it, and I doubt that I'll ever read it again. The Pulitzer committee chose well. This one will be with me for a long time.

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