Originally posted June 23, 2009
Rating ****
I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy last night. It was a short read (about 4 hours) and I’ve heard from others that the writer’s style takes some getting used it. Very short sentences. No quotation marks. But it didn’t bother me at all. The book centers around a man and his child working their way to the coast in a post apocalyptic United States. I loved his poetic descriptions of the ashen world around them. However, it was the existence of a moral structure as a discovery hidden in the scourged planet that made me really love this book. McCarthy gives us redemption in the form of the love between a parent and a child and their desire to be good although it serves no purpose. One of my favorite lines is where the father tells the son that it is better to have nightmares because when you start dreaming, you know the end is near.
When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up.
This book has also been made into a movie to be released later this year. I don’t think the preview gives too much away, but as always I recommend reading the book before seeing the movie 
