A review by parkie007
The Road by Cormac McCarthy

dark emotional sad 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

Very interesting punctuation used by McCarthy. The lack of commas and other punctuation marks generally fit nicely with the bleak, empty setting, while omitting quotation marks helps to blur the line between thoughts and words and even between who is speaking. The immensely dystopian world was enormously depressing and sent me into something of a spiral of dread considering the current state of the world. However, the ending

in which the father dies and the son is rescued by a group of 'good guy' survivors

feels incredibly emotional and cathartic, especially through its bittersweet and hopeful undertones. This book feels like a work of art to me, a text that you don't read so much for its plot or characters but for the emotional impression that it can leave. This will be a difficult book to come back to due to the toll it took on me, but I have no doubt that I will return to it and I have a great desire to read more Cormac McCarthy novels.