Book Review: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I watched the film based on this book long before I read the book. When I found a copy of this at the airport a while back, I had to pick it up. The film is so wonderful, I had to know how closely it followed the book.

It follows a father and his son as they walk south as winter slowly descends upon them. The world has had some apocalyptic event that blotted out the sun. Plant life is all but gone, either burnt or dead. Humans are fighting over food, at least the few who are left are. The man and the boy, nameless, travel through a world long dead just trying to find enough food to last out the day. And the man is dying, slowly, from a cough that is likely some from of lung cancer from breathing in the constant ash falling from the cloudy sky.

There is a reason this book won a pulitzer. It is deep without being showy about it. A survival story unmatched in its characters and world building. Its lightly populated, but you’re never lonely within the story. You travel with the man and his son, hoping they survive. That the find a way out of the story. That they find enough food. That the man does not die before getting his son somewhere where he can survive. It is hard to put down. You cannot look away.

Five out of five stars. Add this to the list of books to read before you die.