Reviews with content warning for Suicide - The Road

What a tense book! I didn’t give much credit to the reviews when I started listening this, but they didn’t lie. It really gave a John Steinbeck’s vibe. Most of the story is about father and son walking towards the coast on a post apocalyptic world, looking for food, running away from bad guys and trying to find hope in the midst of desolation. Through the story we see the father evolving from being super understanding with the child to becoming short tempered as the control starts to slip from his hands together with the realization that he won’t be able to protect the boy forever. At the same time, the boy starts to see his father with new eyes, no longer a hero, but failing to realize that his father is afraid. I confess that at a certain point the boy would die and the father would finally be free from his self imposed responsibilities and put an end to his suffering. But as he says at the end, he wouldn’t be capable of doing so.

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aburnss's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

I initially picked up "The Road" as a recommendation from Lisa. I knew going in that it was a dark dystopian read, but I was still surprised with the depth of emotion the book evoked.

"The Road" follows a father and son as they make their way south following a road, amidst a horrifyingly bleak start to a post-apocalyptic winter. While we know little about what caused this ending of normal society, the characters are faced with a level of desolation that is difficult to comprehend.

The world is covered in ash with fires everywhere. The lack of sun and fires have killed nearly all vegetation and animal life. Humans have long been in starvation and the few remaining alive live in terror of roaming cannibalistic groups.

The desperate fight for survival and slow starvation as the book progresses is heart-wrenching. The author expertly demonstrates the fierce love between parent and child in the backdrop of the most bleak of circumstances imaginable. It is difficult to say I enjoyed reading this book, but it was so well written. The desperation and horror grew with each chapter.

The lack of quotations in the dialogue between characters was a masterful choice. Humans in this world had lost everything. Conversation was plagued with the constant lurking of death around the corner and the lack of quotations made the huge difference between normalcy and this horror all the more apparent.

Several scenes stuck out to me.

The discovery of the locked cellar with emaciated humans tied up for slow consumption. The discovery of the underground bunker and excruciating decision / necessity to leave it. The orchard full of old dry apples and eating and drinking until bloated. The father's desperate instructions to his son on how to use the final bullet to kill himself if he were to be discovered. The naked abandonment of the thief on the road.. and the son's realization that they had indeed killed him.

Each as or more heart breaking than the last, this was not a good book to read before bed.

This book puts the human condition into dramatic perspective. The issues that plague our minds frequently are so inconsequential compared to the bleak and dying world of "The Road". I won't be forgetting this story any time soon. The writing is beautiful, immersive, and perfectly builds a horrifying dystopia. I would recommend this read to anyone wanting to explore familial bonds in the most traumatic setting possible.

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stephanielee's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

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

1.5

I read this book based on a recommendation off TikTok. She had other books that she rated high as I had so I figured this one couldn't be terrible. I was wrong. I will say that once I finished and reflected on this book is the only reason I gave it 1.5 starts. I should've added it to my DNF pile. This is the story of a man and his young son walking across the US after there was some sort of massive devastation that caused a lot of fires. The man knows that one day his kid will be alone and we get flashbacks of the man's wife and some interactions between them. It is supposed to be how the father and son are sustained by love in a hopeless world but the father always seemed to be on the brink of just giving up and didn't really seem to love his son all that much.

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parathenormal's review against another edition

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dark hopeful reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.25

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bean_book's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense

Loveable characters? Yes

4.75

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suneaters's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional 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

4.75

It’s beautifully written, heavy, hopeful, and tragic. The whole thing has a very dreamlike feel. It’s the most nonlinear feeling linear narrative I think I’ve ever read.

The end is hopeful, with the boy being found by a man and a woman with a boy and a girl that are both around his age. It shows that even at the end, there are “good guys” that carry the fire.

It’s also very realistic.

The man and his son nearly starve numerous times, fall ill, are injured, have bad luck, are robbed, and generally aren’t always easily able to traverse the terrain. Sometimes, they both want to die.

I found the depression to be well written and true to life.

This is in stark contrast to the survive at any cost apocalypse stories or even the murder house full of trapped people waiting to be eaten. One already missing his legs, presumably eaten. The boy also sees a dead baby being spit roasted over a fire and desperately asks his father if they would ever do that, to which the father says no.

This book was not enjoyable to read nor was it supposed to be. Yet I read it all in one sitting, desperate to know how their journey ended and where the road ended.

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surdiablo's review against another edition

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dark emotional 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

3.0

So I admittedly had a rough time liking this initially, not because I minded the lack of punctuation or anything similar, I just couldn't connect with it emotionally. The slow, monotonous pacing didn't help either as it felt like it was going nowhere for a while, besides showing how bleak and miserable the world is. However, it picked up around 40% and I found myself interested in it for the most part. This book is unequivocally the embodiment of bleakness, yet it surprisingly manages to instill a sense of hope all the while. Make no mistake, this book can leave you torn apart. There were several gut-wrenching moments, and even though I had already seen the movie and knew what was in store, the ending was emotional. I can see why this one is polarizing aside from the writing style, as people may find the plot or character development lacking, but I think McCarthy crafted a compelling journey that we were meant to take alongside the duo, and it's doubtful any other book can the beat the experience it provides in that sense. It's a beautiful yet disturbing novel that you may or may not click with, but it's also rather short so I would recommend giving it an honest try and not putting it away immediately if you are taken aback by the writing style.

<b>“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”</b>

“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”

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