Read This Book

Book Thoughts


I am haunted still by The Road, a book by Cormac McCarthy that I sadly finished last night. It is a book I would not stop reading, that I did not want to end.

It is story of a man and a boy embarking on a road in an American landscape devastated by a cataclysm in which no animal, vegetation and system—human or otherwise—remain. Little is known of anything: What kind of destruction is this? Is it localized or total? The humans that remain are a dangerous assortment divided into "good guys" and "bad guys." The latter stop at nothing to survive.

The language of "good guys" and "bad guys" is simple but not simplistic. It is the only thing that describes this world in which no rule of law or decency is left. There is one reality and one relationship shown and that is between a nameless man and boy, between father and son.

The namelessness of the characters poses questions: What identifies humans? What connects us? What governs us? The father and son talk in a telegraphic, beautiful and totally unadorned way. This language and their care for one another may be the only thing that separates them from the animals that no longer abound and from the wild and animal within them.