Reviews with content warning for Suicide - The Road

Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

endlessblankpages's review

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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erebus53's review against another edition

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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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lilybear3's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated

4.75

I've been curious about this book for some time and I finally got around to it. When reading and reviewing this book in 2023, it's important to remember this book was first published in 2006. I didn't initially see why this book won a Pulitzer Prize, however, at the time and for all of it's hidden intricacies, it is great.

On the surface, the book is very straightforward and sentences are mainly stating what a character is doing or feeling, what the environment is, etc. However, every now and then, we get a poetic and philosophical paragraph that wants the reader to stop and think. This book is not a feel good book and there are some gruesome imagery at times, but it's not extremely pessimistic either. There is hope, even if just a little. Other themes are love, loss, grief, and humanity.

I think this modern classic is really accessible, the writing isn't too complicated, except for a few words here and there that I didn't recognize. I've seen other reviews question why there aren't quotation marks when characters are speaking and the lack of apostrophes in contractions like "cant." These details are intentional. As a reader, I could still understand who was talking based on how dialogue is laid out in other books. I'm speculating here, but I think it represents the fall of structure and formality, almost all of humanity is gone. It might also be hinting at the lack of education and need for written language.

I love a dystopian and I love that there are so many scenarios that fit that description. There aren't a lot of details as to why the world has turned out this way, but I kind of like that the reader doesn't know and that is left to their own imagination. I thought it might be a statement on environmental issues, but we just don't know. Obviously, reading this in 2023 has made me compare it to more recent media like "The Last of Us," but I don't think that's a bad thing. Both The Road and "The Last of Us" have similar themes, as mentioned above.

I could write an essay on this book. I wasn't sure what I was walking into (I encourage you to do this with any book you read), but I ended up enjoying this a lot. I couldn't put this book down.

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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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elfsteel's review

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.75

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alicemorrison1029's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No

4.5

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bookish_bry's review

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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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