Last week I finished the novel I was reading, The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it since I put it down. To say it had a big impact on me would be putting it mildly – it’s been a long, long time since something had this type of effect on me.

A couple of links to reviews or stories about the book:
A review and synopsis.
The NY Times review
Powell’s Review

The book is just incredible. Published late in 2006, it’s an amazing, heartbreaking story – yet at the same time it’s about love, and hope, and faith, and perseverance.

Be warned, the following contains some mild spoilers (nothing too big), and some graphic language.

The story takes place a few years from now – most would call it a “post-apocalyptic” novel, although it’s not a sci-fi novel. It follows a man and his son as they struggle to survive several years after the onset of nuclear winter. They’re trying to make their way south, into the warmer climates, pushing a shopping cart with their only possessions, and trying to survive the savage weather, the lack of any food, and the encounters they have with other roving survivors – many of whom are savage, murderers or cannibals…”The Bad Guys”, as the father and son refer to them…and they work hard to not become like them. The world is a bleak, horrible place – almost no one is left alive, and even those are to be avoided – and yet the story is one about love, and ethics, and devotion.

At one point, after a particularly horrifying experience, the boy asks of his father:

“We wouldn’t ever eat anybody, would we?”

“Yes.”

It’s my first Cormac McCarthy novel, but I’ll be reading more of his work now. His use of language and metaphor is marvelous in this novel. The “world ending from nuclear war would be bad” message is not a new one, but here it’s told so beautifully, and so chillingly, that I could not put the book down.

There is a passage that, from the second I read it, I’ve not been able to let go of. I re-read it several times, and it’s been in my mind for days. It takes place right after the father and son have met up with a man – “a bad guy” – and the father has to protect his son. The bad guy gets killed. During the incident, the boy winds up getting filthy – covered in blood and gore from the dead man – and the father has to find them a safe place to stay the night, and finds some water to clean the boy up. He washes the boy in the freezing cold water, and, despite the danger of a fire alerting others to their presence, starts a campfire so they can sleep in warmth. The narration at this point is this:

The boy sat tottering. The man watched him, that he not fall into the flames. He kicked holes in the sand for the boy’s hips and shoulders where he would sleep and he sat holding him while he tousled his hair before the fire to dry it. All of this like some ancient anointing. So be it. Evoke the forms. Where you’ve nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.

The love between a father and son, the struggle to fight off the evils of the world, and the desire to create a place of belonging…it’s all there. Evoke the forms. Where you’ve nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them. The power, and beauty, and hope, and desolation in that phrase…I’ve not been able to get it out of my head.

I can’t recommend this novel enough – it’s not an easy read, I’ll grant you that. It’s brutal, and heart-wrenching, but it’s beautiful, and moving. When I finished it, late at night, I went and laid down next to my sleeping son, put my hand on his chest, and just listened to him breathe for a long time.