True Dat, Spillman

For what it's worth, this paragraph completely captures YPTR's experience with Cormac McCarthy's The Road:

The premise of Cormac McCarthy's new novel, The Road, is simple: In a ruined, postapocalyptic future, a nameless father and his young son—"each the other's world entire"—trudge down a road toward the ocean, with the hope of finding a warmer, more hospitable locale. Along the way, they scrounge for cans of food in cities and countryside already thoroughly pillaged by other refugees. Death from starvation and exposure hovers, but a more immediate terror is the constant threat of dismemberment by roving bands of cannibals, for this is what most survivors have been reduced to. There is an urgency to each page, and a raw emotional pull in the way McCarthy, the poet laureate of violence, known for brutal and biblical novels like Child of God (1973) and Blood Meridian, or, The Evening Redness in the West (1985), renders the father's attempts to keep alive the hopes of the young boy as well as his own, making it easily one of the most harrowing books you'll ever encounter. Nearly unreadable in its heartbreaking detail, it is also, once opened, nearly impossible to put down; it is as if you must keep reading in order for the characters to stay alive.

Harrowing indeed.  Not to mention emotionally exhausting, although that could be the new father chemicals talking.

Comments

[Jeff]

It's probably a combination, Rake. I finished The Road a few weeks after my own father chemicals kicked in and I'm still trying to recover from it. I've been thinking about a reread early in 07 to see if it's as good the second time around and when the chemicals may not be as strong. Then again, they may be stronger.

[zk]

It's better the second time through. A librarian at my school said she's tried to read twelve books since she finished The Road and hasn't been able to connect to one yet. It's that good.

When he weighs the rock? Forget about it. That might be pathos, but holy jeez did it make my stomach turn when I considered my own son and my own hands.

I highly recommend the audio book version as well. I rarely/never listen to books, but I wanted to re-re-read it. Hearing someone who (obviously) had to talk to McCarthy for some ideas/notes opened my eyes to certain sections I had thought of as less intense.