Reviews with content warning for Gore - The Road

Reviews tagging 'Gore'

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

80 reviews

erebus53's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

This was a #FOMO Lighthouse Library Bookclub read for June 2023, and I really had no idea what it was about. I was amused that I had already read "The Road" by Jack London which is also a really cool book, though published 99 years earlier.

My overall impression of this book was that it was like a zombie apocalypse story, minus the trees and the zombies. In a non-descript North America that has been razed by fire, a man and his boy walk south in the hopes that they will get to warmer weather, and find it easier to survive. The main characters are known simply as the man, and the boy. This sort of increases the feeling of the bleakness, because for the most part, people are few and far between, and so you don't need a whole heap of names to disambiguate people.. and those names you do get from people are arbitrary and fairly meaningless.

Obviously this is a story of survival, and the balance of grief, hope and faith. As they travel down a highway they have to overcome obstacles both physical and emotional. The narrative is a mix of procedural descriptions, and poetic prose. It almost feels like the pretty bits are mismatched to the story, but I figure you have to have some fancy bits for your essays about the Literature (crozzled means with dark crispy bits on the outside.. like bacon). Typically the poetic observations are those of the end of day; musings that find one just before sleep after a long day of slogging through the countryside. It might help to have a dictionary nearby, because you don't get a Pulitzer by only using common words. There is a harsh poetic beauty to describing a highway full of burnt out cars whose occupants were scorched inside as they tried to flee the firestorms.

Ten thousand dreams ensepulchred within their crozzled hearts.

I really loved the descriptions of coming upon windfall resources, and in my own mind, I would have stopped my journey if I found plenty of resources.. or at least had a breather. Maybe I'm too risk averse to survive the holocaust of a continent. From what happens it doesn't look like radiation is a part of it, so this is a different take on things than other apocalyptic stories like Mad Max.

It was certainly an interesting read.

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mildlypretentiousreader's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

“Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.”
—————————————————————
A slow-paced book, The Road by Cormac McCarthy tells the desolate and cumbersome story of a father (“The Man” ) and his son (“The Boy”) as they travel through a post-apocalyptic United States of America. Their world is severely limited by their grim circumstances. Harsh living conditions, starvation, the threat of animals, the inhumanity of other people. Society is now rampant with thieves, bandits, cannibals, and the like who will do virtually anything to stay alive. Because of the harsh and untrustworthy nature of nearly everyone in the USA, the Man copes with this reality by trusting and helping no one he and his son come across. Although harsh, considering the circumstances, the Man feels this is necessary. If push comes to shove,

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avilareads's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

heartbreaking, with a running current of hopelessness. some of the most beautiful prose i have ever read. truly a masterclass on apocalyptic fiction.

i have some issues with the ending, i felt like it did not align with the themes and ideas that had been set up by the entire book. but honestly, aside from the last 5 pages, it was a perfect novel in every respect.

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amschelly153's review against another edition

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dark sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

Would not suggest as a casual read, it’s a very hard book.

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tr4shc4n's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

5.0

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bookish_bry's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful reflective sad 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? Yes

4.5

I really enjoyed this book. It was incredibly bleak, but there was also some burning embers of hope on almost every page. I really liked the relationship between the father and son. The father was really trying hard to raise his child the best he could even in a world of death and suffering.

The apocalypse itself didn't always make the most sense. It wasn't really steeped in much reality, but that didn't detract from the story too much. I really liked the writing style, but that comes from having listened to its audiobook. Judging by the other reviews, there may be some style choices that could have made it hard to read a physical copy. The audiobook however was great.

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