The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I just finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Oprah's latest picks. I like Oprah's book club. She picks out books that I probably would have never found to read on my own, including this book. I keep reading tons of people saying bad things about the club and the people who read Oprah's books. Why say negative things about someone who gets people reading? And why say negative things about the people who read her books? I don't consider myself or most of the people I know to read her books to be uneducated and unable to comprehend them. Rather, quite the contrary.

The Road was a good, but disturbing book. It tells the story of a nameless man and his son as they head "south" in a postapocalyptic world. We don't know why the world ended, nuclear warfare, natural disaster like an asteroid? It seems to lean more toward nuclear warfare, but it's quite vague. There is no sun anymore, ashes are everywhere, and everything is dead except for a few survivors. The man and his son spend each day scavaging and trying to get to a warmer place as they won't survive another winter in the cold. Along the road, they meet some horrific sights. The "bad" people eat other people to survive, and no one would hesitate to kill another for a can of scavanged food. The story was stark, but yet there was a glimmer of hope at the end.

The prose of this novel was starkly beautiful. Some passages I had to read outloud because of the shear beauty of the words. It was a haunting, sad tale, but somehow, I couldn't put it down. It's a story that will be with me for awhile, and something it would be good to talk to other people about. It is definitely a good book club pick!