Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - The Road

Prescient, disturbing, and sad, occasionally funny, often beautiful, full of (human) nature and faith. Images that stick in your head. Not as completely bleak as I feared and not as violent as some of McCarthy's other works.

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2busyreading's review against another edition

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dark sad slow-paced

3.0

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graceslibrary's review against another edition

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dark sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

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perthalus's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

The Road speaks to me on many levels. To some extent I can compare it to my own life, especially due to how this was originally based on the author’s relationship with his son. I feel as if I am something in-between the father and the son. Carrying my fire through a grey and hopeless world, uncertain who is a good guy and who is a bad guy. Like the father and son I argue with myself about whether I’d be better off helping somebody or looking out for myself. It’s a cold ash-covered world.

The way the world is described, and the characters journey through it, feels like it draws from feelings of depression and anxiety, which I can definitely relate to. We get pages of hopeless grey landscapes full of death and destruction, only to have it broken up by an intimate moment, surrounded but also contained in those feelings. A glimpse of hope.

Every description and conversation feels real, and they never stop no matter how slow or quick the pace goes. It’s a constant, seemingly endless journey, yet every moment is to be savoured and held. The tension of reward and punishment is constantly pulling you to the following page, just to read about every night spent watching the road, every tin of pears and every secret door, because you can feel it.

Maybe I’m biased because of the person who recommended it to me, or because this is the first buddy read I’ve ever done, but this may be my favourite book I’ve read so far. It deserves every bit of praise it gets, it’s beautifully haunted, hopeless yet so incredibly hopeful.

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cursivewolf's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

The whole book is so genuinely bleak and sad. I wept like a baby at the end. It’s so well written as a father trying to keep his son alive and a young boy who is enduring so much trauma and fear. God, I wept. This book hurt so badly. It was so bleak throughout. The writing style kind of irked me but overall it was a good read if you want to feel like garbage.

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corruptednatz's review against another edition

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dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No

3.5

This is an okay book for the dystopian genre. I never got a chance to figure out what happened to the world and what let the people to such savagery. Kinda heartbreaking the more they explore and the less they find; they slowly start to come to terms that there’s nothing left in the world.

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