The Road in SciFi and Fantasy Book Club

Jan 17, 2009 Mike rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: xcharity-2012, fiction

200 pages of a depressing world wonderfully rendered in words with 2 pages of less depressing finish. Guy writes amazingly well but this is tough reading.

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Dec 13, 2009 Chad rated it did not like it

I guess I shouldn't judge a book by how others reacted to it, but as a regular reader of speculative fiction, I have read many similar stories that I enjoyed far more. The way people who would never consider themselves readers of genre fiction have gushed over this particularly tepid example has really soured me toward this book itself. As for the work itself, its appeal seems to rely on its "artistic" use of language and the maudlin sentiment expressed therein. Really at its heard it's a pulp s ...more

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May 25, 2011 Henrik rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, realism

"A work of such terrible beauty..." That's the words from the The Times' review of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. And I have no choice but to concur. This is a masterpiece, no less. And to think this is even a sort of mainstream success in our time makes it all more remarkable. And gives me a tiny hope for mankind. That such a dark work can be absorbed by modern man (yes, yes, woman too) gives me hope that we're not completely drowned in the ignorance and stupidity of reality TV and whatnot. Yet.

I "A work of such terrible beauty..." That's the words from the The Times' review of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. And I have no choice but to concur. This is a masterpiece, no less. And to think this is even a sort of mainstream success in our time makes it all more remarkable. And gives me a tiny hope for mankind. That such a dark work can be absorbed by modern man (yes, yes, woman too) gives me hope that we're not completely drowned in the ignorance and stupidity of reality TV and whatnot. Yet.

I won't give away details -- if you have yet to read it, or haven't seen the fine movie version starring Viggo Mortensen, I urge you to do so with a "clean mind" so the power can really get you -- but I will state that McCarthy manages the seemingly impossible: presenting a doomed real-life world (I don't think it's a spoiler to say this is, after all, a post-apocalyptic story of the darkest kind) while at the same time being a story about a father's love for his son -- probably the most gripping, sad as well as hopeful story about humanity, love and grief in the face of the bleak inevitable of existence. If I hadn't read it myself I wouldn't have believed it could be done. Less of all successfully!

I am not sure it's a proper parallel but I keep thinking this book is what Thomas Ligotti would have written if he had written "humane stories." Not really just to either authors, I suppose, but there you go.

Each page, each line, drips with poetry and despair, and I could quote just about every sentence, and it would all sound brilliant. Yes, I think it's that good. And it's wonderful to see a writer demonstrate, so deftly and masterful, that you can invoke genuine horror in a quite stripped-down language, in a tradition more Hemingway than Lovecraft. I am a stout defender of the latter, always, but that doesn't mean I cannot see the virtues of other approaches to writing. All that matters is if the writing in question is the best possible way to express what is trying to be said.

This story couldn't be told any better. Period. ...more

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