Overview
A father and son journey through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, clinging to each other and to hope in a world that has been stripped of everything.
McCarthy published The Road in 2006. The novel follows an unnamed father and son walking through a post-apocalyptic American landscape, a world in which almost everything has died and the sun is blocked by ash. McCarthy dedicated the book to his young son and said the relationship at the book's centre was inspired by his own fatherhood in late middle age. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007.
Key Ideas
Love persists
The bond between parent and child endures even when civilization itself has collapsed.
Carrying the fire
The father's mission to keep his son alive becomes a metaphor for preserving goodness in a world of darkness.
The choice to remain human
In a world where survival demands savagery, choosing compassion is the ultimate act of courage.
Who should read this
Readers prepared to face one of the bleakest major novels of the twenty-first century. The Road is also one of the most intensely loving novels I know; its entire structure is built around what a parent does for a child in the absence of any other hope. Particularly devastating for readers who have become parents recently.
Who might skip it
Skip if you cannot tolerate post-apocalyptic fiction — McCarthy does not soften what he is describing, and the book contains scenes that will stay with you. Skip also if you dislike McCarthy's prose style, which strips punctuation (no quotation marks, minimal apostrophes) and can feel austere to the point of affectation.
The verdict
One of the finest novels of its decade. McCarthy's stripped-back late prose style is at its most effective here, and the novel's central relationship earns every line. The ending, which I will not spoil, is one of the few moments of moral clarity in the book and is all the more powerful for it. A hard book to recommend, and one I recommend anyway.
"You have to carry the fire." "Is it real? The fire?" "Yes it is."
— Cormac McCarthy, The Road
If you liked this
Blood Meridian for McCarthy's darker masterpiece. The Border Trilogy for his warmer major work.