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16.3k reviews for:

The Road

Cormac McCarthy

3.92 AVERAGE

challenging dark sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
challenging dark tense slow-paced

I had such hope for this book when I opened it. Pulitzer Prize winning, has been adapted into a film, very famous - I thought I was in for a post-apocalyptic masterpiece, but I was sorely disappointed. There is no denying that McCarthy is a talented writer, with a great ability to write a sense of urgency and grotesque imagery throughout the novel. However, the lack of any character development, important moral discussion on the nature of humanity, or compelling aspects despite every opportunity, meant that for me this book was just miserable. The only thing I could compare it to would be that feeling when you reach the later seasons of the Walking Dead and each episode is just characters walking while hungry, trying not to be eaten by cannibals while wondering what the point of surviving is. But at least in that show, the characters are likeable. This book made me very cynical about the Pulitzer prize judging committee, as I can say for a fact if this was written by a woman or someone who wasn't white, we would have never heard of it. 
challenging dark emotional reflective medium-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

A book so good it made me get back on goodreads in anticipation of finishing it

This is gonna be a long review I think

I was hesitant coming into the road. I knew that McCarthy has written some brilliant novels, but this was my first dip into his works and I was worried that the brutality of the novel would be extreme. Instead, I found a book that—while certainly brutal—was, at its core, about endurance and hope.

The road, in its core, is a series of contradictions. A father and son are trying to survive in a post apocalyptic world. The father is trying to keep his son alive, but also keeps a gun close on hand to shoot his child with should the child be captured by ‘the bad guys’.

There’s a constant tension underlying the novel at every turn—every house they enter to search for food has a risk of having people in it, ready to fight for their survival—and yet the tension is often resolved instantly, and without much drawn out. In one section, for instance, the boy is scared of going into the upstairs, and pleads with his father not to go up there. The father wants to go to search for supplies, and there was a fear in the back of my head—while the father is probably right in that the likelihood of something being up there is slim to none, who knows what might be up there? And then finally the father says he’s going up, the scene ends, and we discover in the next that he found blankets up there. There’s a constant terror—who knows what could spell the end for this father and child—but bad things often happen randomly and when least expected.

Why I really liked it is below
Sorry if you read above thinking it would just be a lil review I tricked you

The real core of this novel, though, is the father and son themselves. The way the father cares so deeply for his son, so much so that he’s willing to live in hell for a while longer in order to spend more time with him, made me attached to the two instantly. There are constant moments, constant reminders of the care the two have for each other, with the son depending on the father’s practical knowledge and applications as much as the father depends on the son to keep him going and stop him from giving up.

So yeah, I thought it was good. Id recommend this to anyone who’s alright with the occasional gruesome depictions of things happening in a world that’s fallen apart, and who’s willing to put up with mccarthy’s lack of punctuation or general grammar rules. It’s good
slow-paced

I finished the book under a leanto in a summer storm. Then I cried quite a lot and THEN I wrote a spoof in the same style where a guy goes through a terrible shit. Rip cormac you taught me how to grieve 
challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous emotional sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
adventurous challenging dark medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes