The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I'm 120 pages into The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It's a book I picked up back in May, but then due to work, was unable to complete. So, with the summer, I decided to pick up where I left off.

This is an unusual novel in a number of ways. It's unconventional - no chapters, just paragraphs separated by big spaces from one another. The characters are unnamed and since both main characters are male, it can become dubious who's talking or doing something. I probably wouldn't teach this book to a group of high school students due to the horrific amount of incomplete sentences, the lack of apostrophes in conjunctions, and again, the fact that using the pronoun "he" is confusing when there are two male characters...and really only two male characters. But of course, this is a STYLE and it works rather nicely as a means to set a long, frightening tone throughout the novel.

Oh, so, a quick synopsis: A man and a boy are wandering down a road on foot to go south. The world is post-apocalyptic, but I only say this because that's how the book jacket describes the setting. As an independent reader/thinker, I find it hard to say. As of yet, why the world is this way hasn't been described, only what is: Everything is dead. Trees, grass, a large portion of the human race. Everything is covered in ash, including the sky which allows a minimal amount of sunlight through the ashy haze. Buildings have been ravaged for any supplies - food, clean water, gasoline. There are gangs of brutal people out to slaughter anyone in their path. There are slaves. You get the idea. Civilization is gone.

And really, what kind of plot do you need when you've stuck a father and his son in this setting? For the past 120 pages, they've simply wandered. Most of what I've read is simply descriptions of the wasteland they're walking through and the simple exchanges between father and son. But there's tension. Because you know they're afraid. They're starving. They'll make a wrong turn somewhere. You just don't know when things are going to go from bad to worse.

I can't wait to finish this book to find out what happens next.