Darlene's Review: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I'm not doing very well with this challenge and need to pick up the pace! I need to make more of an effort to choose books from my list. But the new ones that come out are so tempting! Ah, the bane of a book-lover :)

I just finished Book #2 on my Fill In The Gaps list:

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
3/5 stars

Here is the link to my review:
http://darlenesbooknook.blogspot.ca/2012/07/audiobook-review-road-by-cormac-mccarthy.html

Matthew, Book Review, *Cormac McCarthy, *Blood Meridian

I finished Blood Meridian (1985) a few days ago, but I needed a few days to digest what I'd read before posting anything. The novel follows The Kid, a teenager from Tennessee who joins a group of outlaws in Mexico and helps them murder, rape, and steal their way across the countryside. McCarthy doesn't gloss over any of the nasty parts, either -- the violence in the book is graphic, unsettling, and abundant. Even so, I don't want to give the impression that the violence in the book is needlessly gratuitous. I mean, it is absolutely gratuitous, excessive even, but never needlessly so. Every last bit of it is central to the several themes of the novel.

On one level, Blood Meridian is a blunt de-mythologizing of the Wild West. Hollywood's cattle rustlers whose bullets never hit their target and strangely honorable duel-at-high-noon bad guys have been replaced with the actual wanted men, cavalry soldiers, and Indian warriors who terrified populaces across the West and Southwest in all their psychopathic, nigh-feral grotesqueness. Men are disemboweled and mutilated, babies are dashed against rocks, women are scalped and raped as they lay dying. It's damned tough to romanticize anything about this part of North American history after you understand the sorts of things that really went on back then.

The violence also serves as an exploration of the depravities in which humans are capable of indulging, and some of those explorations take the form of ad hoc discourses by Judge Holden, the outlaw gang's second in command and one of the most remarkably complex characters I've come across in recent memory (he's a sort of Death/Old Testament/Satan figure, among other things).

The dark subject matter makes the book uncomfortable to read in places, but hopefully that won't stop someone from reading it themselves. A large part of its impact on the reader lies in the stark power of its unflinching depictions of human cruelty, and the book absolutely deserves every bit of the praise that's been heaped upon it over the years. Just expect to come out of the experience a bit drained.

Review by Shellie: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Two down 73 more to go.

This is the slightly altered post from my blog. It has created the most comments since I started it several months ago and the opinions swing greatly. Either they loved it or hated it. It appears that this has been happening everywhere.

Book Stats from Goodreads:

Published September 26th 2006 by Knopf

Binding Hardcover - 241 pages

Literary Awards: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction (2006), The National Book Critics (2006)

ISBN: 0307265439 (isbn13: 9780307265432)

Mini Synopsis:

An unnamed man and his boy are faced with trying to survive on a post apocalyptic earth. The cause of this is alluded to but never fully explained. They are traveling on a road toward the coast in the futile hope of finding sustenance – food, clean water, life, and like minded companionship. Their world is ashen, and no other life exists except a few wandering survivors and bands of lawless thugs. Resources are scarce since it is apparently years after the actual event and most have been already used by the remaining survivors. As they struggle and travel theirs becomes a story of horror, familial love, sadness, and an almost impossible hope for survival.

My Thoughts:

I rated it unusually – it swings bluntly between 2.5 stars and 4.5 – on balance it it 3.5 stars.

For the highest rating of this swing I gave The Road, I can say It was incredible. I felt such strong emotions as I read this book. As I read I felt the loss, pain, and horror. It left an empty feeling deep in the pit of my stomach - very real. The writing flows and is broken up into small sections making it easier to digest since it has a heart wrenching effect. Most importantly, I found myself thinking about it as during the day.

The problem that I had with this book was that within the simple text and realistic dialog between son and father, there were little sections of which were impossible for me to understand. Small and short as they were - they appeared to be describing very intense emotions. I just did not “get these little bits”. Feeling a little dense - I even read them to my husband and he expressed the same perspective. (Because of this he probably will not read the book.)

In Summary I recommend this book, if you can overlook the parts that I am describing, or perhaps you will not notice them at all. I seldom give above a 4 star rating so parts of the book are exceptional.

On another positive note it is now out in paper back, should be available used at second hand stores everywhere, and not so hot off the press that you can get it at your local library.

Amazon Purchasing information linked below respectively. US/UK/Canada

The Road (Oprah's Book Club)/ The Road/ The Road (Oprah's Book Club)

For the original post link to Layers of Thought here.