Wandering the rows of fiction in B&N, buzzed on caffeine, keeping an eye out for girls hovering around the Murakami section, this jumped out at me. I should say the newer addition with the movie tie-in jumped out at me, but fuck that. I reached down, pulled out the original and fanned through it for a minute wondering if watching the movie first ruined any future enjoyment I might have. As with most trips to B&N this trip was motivated by impulse so I carried it to the checkout and drove home on a new avenue of self-inflicted depression.
I'm not sure if the general public knows about this story. If I recall correctly, the movie did rather well, but I can imagine the subject matter having somewhat of a polarizing effect on hopeful audiences. Just in case the story isn't known I'll describe enough to convey the mood.
The Road is about a father and his son, both unnamed, traveling toward the ocean. The world around them is burned, decaying and cold. Everyone they knew is dead, and many of the remaining survivors have resorted to cannibalism in order to stay alive.
The story documents their journey as they attempt to live as good men, finding food where they can, finding warmth and avoiding survivors who no longer have the capacity for mercy.
Given I'm not a novelist, nor do I ever plan to be, so I'll leave the technical commentary to those better educated. What I can comment on is how it made me feel.
And, quite simply this novel made me feel awful. Empathy was pouring out of deep wounds cut with paranoia, loneliness and desolation. And if you know anything about me, you'd know that I quite enjoyed it.
There were so many heart-wrenching scenes. I've heard criticisms of repetition, but they're unfounded. Each scene of loss builds on the last, each step they took was toward a conflict of whether or not to live. And the father, a man of great strength always chose to keep going, and tried to instill the importance of the fight, the fire of survival, in his terrified son.
A few scenes are going to stick with me for a while and I'll describe two for my own future benefit, but please stop here and go buy the book if this sort of thing interests you. The man and his son happened upon a farm house, seemingly vacant and a possible source of forgotten nourishment. Within the house the man finds a cellar and descends with his son eager to find food, but what they find are people, stripped, emaciated and unclean, chained to walls and steel mattresses begging for help, gasping in terror. And they had to leave them there, food for cannibals, helpless. Truly horrifying.
The other scene worth mentioning is one that hit me on a personal level. When I was in grade school, my father came down with an illness that brought him near his own demise. There was a day before he was admitted into the hospital when he asked for me to listen to him. He simply wanted to tell me that he loved me. This jarred me as a teenager, I was filled with sadness and hate and... it was hard. So toward the end of the story when the father is speaking his last words to his son, trying to convince him to keep the fire alive, to keep going without him, I was there with him. It was a profound moment for me, so I owe you some gratitude Mr. McCarthy. That's the sort of emotion I live for because pain reminds us how fragile and beautiful life is.
Anyway, buy the book, enjoy it, if you can; if you can handle being dragged through mud and ash and fire and loss.
5/5
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