The Road

Ever since I first laid eyes on Cormac McCarthy's The Road I was hungry to dive into it. I first saw the book's minimalist, trade paper cover at a Kroger while attempting a quick browse during a particularly stressful shopping trip. I am a judger of covers. I know it's literarily wrong and proverbially frowned upon but I do it anyhow. I will stand in front of an entire selection of Cranford at Half Price Books before making a choice because despite the same text on the inside I will always pick the one with the most attractive cover. I digress. My point is that the simplicity of the cover of McCarthy's book temporarily assuaged my uneasiness regarding the likelihood of human horror Cormac often peppers into his stories. He doesn't shy away from a bit of blood or mortal peril, never mind how relevant or well crafted every element is.

Frankly speaking, it is a daunting task to offer a review of a bestseller let alone an Oprah's Book Club read. The intimidation is not because gross sales or because the queen of daytime talk have supreme authority in establishing the credibility or quality of a read, but because once a book has earned this type of visibility everyone has an opinion and no one wants to hear another. Oh well. Here goes.

I am a fond admirer of the straight forward style with which The Road unfolds. Technically speaking it is stripped of extravagant descriptives and is instead constructed of the potent and the necessary. Odd as it seems for this lover of 19th century lit, I appreciate the reduction. McCarthy's brilliant posture of just enough information requires the contribution of the reader's imagination be a committed and engrossed one. Cormac constructs using only intentional details and in cloistered contexts much like the rendered intimacy of the fires the man and his son huddle tightly around.

It is a rare thing to blindly accept a story what's context is limited in definition. Is it post-apocalyptic? Was it war? Who are these men on the road? When is this? Why? Cleverly, the element of the unknown keeps the story vibrantly and consistently alive. The reader's own questions inform the unknowns with a personally tailored touch.

Whatever the answers to the questions of What? Where? Why? and How?, survival stories are always dramatic, always personal, and always horrifying. It is a place we all go to in our daydreams. Do we have what it takes to brave death? Do we have it in us to live? What would it require? In describing the setting, McCarthy repeatedly selects from a limited vocabulary (ash, gray, blackness, cold). This begins to grow tired thirty pages in but it's right about that time when the reader adopts an imagined empathy which transforms the annoyingly repetitive into the mantra, the true. This too is our reality.

The pace is hold-your-breath rapid. The adrenaline is consistent. The finish is as tidy as it can get (maybe even too tidy). If you live under a rock or in a post-apocalyptic world of your own and you haven't read it then you must. Reader beware: it will destroy you if you are a parent, it will make you wretch if you are squeamish, it will transport you and teach you if you are willing.