The land is covered in ash. The sun shines for only a few precious hours a day. The world’s water has been turned into a gray viscous sludge. Humanity has nearly been wiped out. Those that are left are either predator or prey. But one thing is left, one hope for those that are looking for a new beginning after the end of what was. That thing is the road, but to travel along it’s twisted path is a journey into hell itself.

Author Cormac McCarthy has created a chilling and frightening look into a possible future of the world and in his novel, The Road. McCarthy has also created a great literary work with his vision which reads like an apocalyptic version of The Grapes of Wrath.

Nuclear war has finally happened, and the world is an ash-covered ruin. We are introduced to a nameless father and son, who with a few scattered others, have managed to survive the fallout and have reverted back into a hunter-gatherer style of life. But the hope is if they follow the road to the west coast, then there will be some kind of future for them. Finding food, water, shelter and staying alive have become the only concerns. The land is constantly combed by groups of gangs of predators who will feed on any thing they come across in the waste lands of the former world, including other humans!

McCarthy truly creates some horrific images as we go along the road. There were times as I read this book that I actually had to look away from the pages. Picturing the events that were taking place was extremely hard at times, especially sequences that dealt with the rampant cannibalism that takes place throughout the book. One section that deserves note, because it unnerved me so much, was when two pregnant woman are kept as slaves to a group of marauders, why is the unnerving thing. The horrors that are found in an abandoned farmhouse and the field dressings of unfortunate victims scattered along the road, are brutal and sadistic in their descriptions.

But what makes this story so great is at the heart of the story is the relationship between a father and a son. Given no names we know them only as “the boy” and “papa”. The boy around the age of nine is the father’s world and his albatross at the same time. He hates the world and what it has become, but each day he goes on with life for his son. The boy is naïve and innocent, but all around him is death and despair. The times when the boy and father are starving or in peril are made much worse as the father continues to sacrifice more and more to provide for the child, pushing and punishing himself daily. The world will weigh heavy on the father and during the cold and wet nights when he holds his shivering son and contemplates whether or not to continue along the road, these are incredible emotional crests and lows for the reader to go along with, especially after you learn what is really on the father’s mind.

The Road is a brilliant novel and the only thing that slightly flaws it is the ending. As you read the story you can tell that the seventy-four year old McCarthy is giving us a warning, preaching if you will, and it is a great sermon to listen to, but in the final pages he seems to go a little soft, which is off pace with the rest of the book as it is extremely hard and harsh, but this is still an incredible book.

9.5 of 10