Reviews with content warning for Chronic illness - The Road

Reviews tagging 'Chronic illness'

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

15 reviews

cstein's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

4.25

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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luis0n7i's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

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benjiaprout's review

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dark tense fast-paced

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

5.0

"I need a sit-down and to breathe" (my original review)

'The Road' - A Study in "Less is More"

If you're going to read this book, read it as quickly as you can. I'll start off my waffling with that, because if you don't want a long and drawn out musing on this novel, that is the TL;DR version.

I really enjoyed 'The Road', although I'm familiar with 'No Country For Old Men', this is the first actual work by Cormac McCarthy that I've consumed. That being said, I want to be aware of how perhaps the way I read this book may have enhanced my experience. It's only a short novel, I think a little over 300 pages, and I read it in two sittings - though a part of me wishes I'd read it in one. These sittings were alone in my room at intervals of between 5:30 - 7:00am and 00:00 - around 3:00am (roughly). Just as I wouldn't recommend doing guided meditation on a crowded tube train, I also wouldn't recommend reading this book in small sections, or in a loud environment. McCarthy's style demands your full attention and immersion, and I can say that I only fleetingly took my attention away from the pages once I'd actually started reading.

Despite there not being a heap of things to spoil in this novel, I'll try to keep the premise brief: an unnamed cataclysm has completely razed the world to the ground. I have my theories as to what the apocalypse was, but I appreciate the fact that it's never actually explained. A man and his son (I always imagined around 5-7 years old) in the ruins of the US make their way south, trying to find a safe place to live. That's it in a nutshell. I think the simplicity of it is what I found so inviting about the book upon reading it. I haven't consumed all that much apocalypse media recently (bet you won't guess why) but I find that a lot of apocalypse stories have similar tropes. Ragtag groups of likeable misfits, prophecies / plot armour and main character syndrome, paired with supernatural elements that often push them more toward fantasy or conventional science fiction. These have their place, I'm not casting aspersions, but I enjoy that 'The Road' has none of these things.

The book is bleak. That is probably one of the only things I knew about it going in, it was about an apocalypse, and it's depressing. I think in hindsight that "depressing" is an easy word to pop over what is, I think, something a little more complex than that. Sure, there isn't any laughter in this book, the environment is inhospitable, there are no living creatures aside from those that fought tooth and nail through whatever happened and death is everywhere. It is not a happy story, but I found that many people who've read this story online agree that beneath all of the end-of-the-world stuff, there is actually a story about immense hope, love and devotion. When you have really only two characters to follow through an entire novel, they have to be worth reading about. Within a few pages, I found myself caring perhaps a little bit too much about the man and his son. We know next to nothing about them, not their names, their pasts, or even what they look like. The most we really know is that there was a mother, but she's gone now, and that the child was born after the end of the world had started, or at least when it started. I never found myself actually imagining a face for either of them, they could have been absolutely anybody. Their bond, one born of familial love but also out of sheer survival, is what makes this book so very readable. It's not sappy, there aren't really any heroics or grand gestures, but the moments of genuine sweetness shared between them are enough to alleviate some of the overwhelming pressure that this book puts on the reader.

I would describe reading this novel as how I imagine the experience of walking around a field in the middle of the night, naked, with a wet and dirty blanket over your face; it's cold, dark, hard to breathe and you're constantly in fear of bumping into something. There is, from page one, tension that builds and builds, the world of 'The Road' is unknown, deeply dangerous, and seemingly never-ending. There are moments of action, dotted here and there to just the right amount, and at just the right frequency. Too many, and you begin to feel desensitized to it, too few, and you'd drop your guard. There are no frills to these moments, what happens, happens, and McCarthy attaches no bells or whistles to the nastiness he writes. That being said, he also doesn't cross the line of it being too 'gritty' and becoming an unnecessary gore fantasy. Less is more. There were times when my stomach lurched, one moment where I had to stop reading and close my eyes for a few seconds, and a part that made me feel like I needed a long shower afterwards. I think past readers will probably know to which part I refer, and they'd hopefully agree that the moments of immediate danger don't overstay their welcome. Tension in 'The Road' follows you from a mile or two away, at enough of a pace for you to know it's there, but not so close that you feel like it's breathing down your neck.

I understand that this book will not be for everyone, the only other person I know who's read it, really didn't like it, and I sympathise. If you came for excitement, then I would suggest going elsewhere. Personally, I found that if the book had been any longer, be it padding before the ending or adding on to the ending we got, it would probably get on my nerves a little. I was ready for it to end when it ended, I enjoyed the ending and I don't think there need to be any sequels or scenes added. McCarthy's writing style may also drag on you a bit, none of the dialogue is punctuated, something that I felt added to the feel of reading it, but to some, will be grating. I get it. If you don't feel totally invested in the future of these characters, their story could even be a bit boring for you, a lot of the book boiling down to: 'Walk along the road, find a house, search the house, go hungry, oh God in heaven please tell me that's not a-', you get the gist. If I had read 'The Road' in small installments, I probably wouldn't have been so gripped by it.

There does exist a film, with the wonderful Viggo Mortenson playing the man, and it shocked me to find out that this book only came out in 2006. For some reason I thought it was from the 60s or 70s, just how I was confused to find out that "The Haunting of Hill House" was in fact written in the 1950's when I thought it was a 2000s novel before picking it up. I haven't seen the film, and after watching a few clips, I'm not sure I need to. A lot of people enjoyed it, it seems, but I think 'The Road' is one of those stories that works best as a book - besides, I've got a really annoying habit of thinking "That's not how it looked in my head", and not liking adaptations because of it. I will probably read this book again in a few years, but I don't need to for a while, maybe once the images it put in my head die away a bit. It may not be something by Tarantino but the gore and imagery is still pretty disturbing to those that don't have a great love for that sort of stuff (me).

This review was a lot longer than I expected it to be, but I had a lot to say about it, I'm not even really sure if what I've put down is everything I wanted to say. Read 'The Road' in one or two sittings if you can, in a quiet place, and try to breathe, I forgot sometimes.

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sarah_ann_roth's review

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challenging dark 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? No

1.0

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eininthebird's review

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dark emotional 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? Yes

4.0

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