WONDROUS WASTELAND
by Susana Fletcher
If you’re like me, and you’ve somehow got this far in life without reading Cormac McCarthy, stop. McCarthy’s latest novel will change the road you’re on.
The Road is a story of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. There have been fires, explosions, and wars, and most life has gone from the planet. Nearly every trace of food is gone. The ashen world has been ravaged for about ten years by those willing to do anything to survive. And walking on foot through the dismal leftovers is a father and son, headed toward the Gulf Coast for warmth. They are two of the few people who are still inexplicably alive. "Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire."
The characters are referred to as “he” and “the boy”, and theirs is a deeply moving story of a father balancing the dangerous scales of self-preservation and integrity and a boy who has never known anything but the atrocities of recent history. They live on small miracles and fortuitous discovery. A savage gang of survivors might be tracking them. And one more thing, the father is desperately sick.
McCarthy has woven his story in prose that reads like one’s dying last words: broken, beautiful, and packed with purpose. “Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone." A deeply engaging and heartbreaking journey that will give you goose bumps with each reading, The Road is emotionally challenging and lyrically masterful.
THE ROAD
By Cormac McCarthy.
