Review - The Road

[wilderthan]

I don't know what to say about Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Given how much attention it seems to get, I'd hoped I'd fall head over heels in love with it, but it's not really that kind of book. It's very bleak, almost hopeless -- though not quite completely hopeless. The choice to disregard various conventions of novels -- punctuation, chaptering, naming characters -- was interesting. I wasn't convinced by it -- it made the book different in that sense, but I'm not sure the rest of it was that different. It's three hundred pages long, but a lot of that is the same thing over again -- walking, walking, walking, starving, meeting someone on the road, surviving, starving, invesigating a potential source of food, eating for a few days, starving, walking, walking...

You get the drift.

I did like it, in the sense that it felt gritty and real and you could almost taste the ash and the lack of hope. I found it interesting to see how it dealt with the way it discarded conventions. The reasons for that were obvious, but I'm not sure it got round all the disadvantages -- for example, not knowing who's saying what, and dialogue not being immediately obvious. Mind you, all the possible confusion might have been intended. It was easier to read than I'd anticipated.

It's a new, bleak kind of roadtrip novel, I guess. It's easy enough to read, and I think it could be accessible whether you're used to post-apocalyptic fiction or not. It won't make you feel great about the world, though.

There are two extracts I really liked:

Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire.
(p. 4)

They lay listening. Can you do it? When the times comes? When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die. What if it doesnt fire? It has to fire. What if it doesnt fire? Could you crush that beloved skull with a rock? Is there such a being within you of which you know nothing? Can there be? Hold him in your arms. Just so. The soul is quick. Pull him toward you. Kiss him. Quickly.
(p. 120)

And the quiet image, throughout the book but not foregrounded particularly, the image of them 'carrying the fire'.

Comments

[misura.livejournal.com]

From the extracts and your description, this sounds like one book I'll be sure to pass over.

Call me a snob, but I think novels have conventions (such as punctuation) for a reason, and I'm just too much of a cynic to buy that it limits one's ability for 'art'. ^^;

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I liked it, and I normally agree with you. I think the reason the punctuation is missing/patchy is because the book is trying to echo the content in the form -- the breakdown of the conventions for novels echoes the breakdown of society. It didn't completely convince me that that was necessary, but I began to get used to it reasonably quickly.

[misura.livejournal.com]

Mm. Well, guess it won't cost me anything to borrow it from the library, if they happen to have it.

Thanks for talking me into giving it a try at least. *g*

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

I think it is worth a try if it's the sort of thing you're interested in -- but I do agree in general, conventions are there for a reason. Must confess I was never entirely convinced by e.e.cummings' poetry when I read it, either...