Reviews tagging 'Kidnapping'

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

8 reviews

tkroeker's review

Go to review page

challenging dark sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

This book is a challenging read. The writing is solid throughout, at times impeccable. At its best it is straight poetry, which contrasts with raw matter-of-fact depictions of unimaginable brutality and loss of humanity. It is a clever device McCarthy uses to mirror the abstraction that traumatized people must undergo in order to avoid their own insanity. It’s well worth the read if you can stomach it. Stars docked for preference more than quality. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

ee_comins's review

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense 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? Yes

4.75


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

rottenromance's review

Go to review page

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-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? Yes

5.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

maulikki's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional sad fast-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? Yes

4.0

I usually like stories set in dystopian worlds, and this one definitely left me thinking. To me, the book was a good balance between light and dark, I really enjoyed all the small believable moments of love and humanity inside the new bleek world. The book rarely gave any answers, and instead presented a parent in impossible situations trying their best to protect their child. I get this is not for anyone, but just for the writing alone, I could recommend this one. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

nadalien's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? N/A
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

erebus53's review against another edition

Go to review page

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.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

childofmongreldogs's review

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

My first reading was definitely a more enjoyable experience. (Enjoyable in the sense that I didn't see some of the more flagrant flaws in the writing as opposed to the content matter which is mostly unenjoyable and pretty bleak.) 

There are some questions, though. While the boy's age isn't really stated, he seems to be very young in the ways in which he interacts with the world. It makes me wonder about what the world was like when he was small. He clearly understood how bleak everything was (the one question about his mother's disappearance) but he also seemed remarkably sheltered in other ways. The absence of most punctuation lacks clarity in a way that is more confusing than poignant. I will also say that it felt like none of this book was planned. Things happen, the characters react or underreact. There seems to be no direction. I don't know if it's reading into it to say that that might have been intentional since the two of them are wandering aimlessly with no plans beyond survival.

I still like The Road, however; I found that the minimalist way that it's been written really adds to the ambiance. There's a certain void to it, an empty flatness, that's reinforced by the stark punctuation and dialogue between the man and the boy. The stark contrast between the emptiness of the narrative that's pretty much void of description and the "purple prose" that seems to originate from a different perspective was an interesting choice. I actually enjoyed the characters and thought they did have a very strong personality between the two of them though I noticed some reviewers didn't see that. 

Overall, lovely prose, painful emotions, and a heartbreaking ending that leaves the reader with the same sense of mystery made it a lovely read for me. I liked that the questions remained unasked and the novel refused to answer them. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

clarissajs's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark slow-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

0.5

I wasn't really sure how to rate this one. I finished it, fairly quickly too, so I must have enjoyed it to some degree. Although, it was a short story and it didn't have any chapters or sections, so maybe it didn't take long for that reason.

I didn't find myself unable to put it down or impatient to get back to it. I think I just wanted to finish it so I could start a new book. I said to my partner last night that "I kept waiting for them to explain what happened leading up to this story, by the time I realised that wasn't going to happen, I had less than 100 pages left and thought I may as well finish it."

It was short, continuous and repetitive. You don't find out much about anything, the plot and characters are like poorly kept secrets, that you only get little bits of through the book. Overall, I would rate it as okay. I wouldn't recommend it.

This story could've been something amazing, it could have been a political statement on climate change or something (the world literally burnt). Instead, it left a lot to question and even more to our imaginations. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
More...