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The Road (Unabridged) | 
| Author: Cormac Mccarthy
Publisher: audible.com
Category: Book
List Price: $29.99
Buy New: $15.74
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1573 reviews
Sales Rank: 5522183
Media: Audio Download
ASIN: B000OCZ2MA
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Amazon.com Review
Best known for his Border Trilogy, hailed in the San Francisco Chronicle as "an American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century," Cormac McCarthy has written ten rich and often brutal novels, including the bestselling No Country for Old Men, and The Road. Profoundly dark, told in spare, searing prose, The Road is a post-apocalyptic masterpiece, one of the best books we've read this year, but in case you need a second (and expert) opinion, we asked Dennis Lehane, author of equally rich, occasionally bleak and brutal novels, to read it and give us his take. Read his glowing review below. --Daphne Durham
Guest Reviewer: Dennis Lehane
 Dennis Lehane, master of the hard-boiled thriller, generated a cult following with his series about private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, wowed readers with the intense and gut-wrenching Mystic River, blew fans all away with the mind-bending Shutter Island, and switches gears with Coronado, his new collection of gritty short stories (and one play).
Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehane
Product Description
A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece.
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.
The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1568 more reviews...
THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy October 15, 2008
The Road is Cormac McCarthy's novel about a man and his son trying to make their way through postapocalyptic America. In 2007, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was featured on Oprah Winfrey's Book Club.
The story, plain and simple, deals with the man and the boy and their quest to reach the coast while avoiding bandits, scavengers, and cannibals. The interplay between the man and the boy is well done, although McCarthy allows the story to fall into a somewhat tedious repeating pattern of starve/find a stockpile/starve/find a stockpile. The end of the novel is somewhat predictable and perhaps not as poignant as McCarthy intended (or as some critics have claimed).
McCarthy uses vivid, sometimes ponderous language that works more often than not, and this is what makes the novel so memorable. The Road is short and spare, but McCarthy still manages to immerse the reader in his dark, cold, horror-filled world. He's also able to create a degree of suspense. McCarthy (in the voice of the man) often falls into something akin to stream-of-consciousness, and this works less frequently. Sentence fragments abound, jarringly.
The Road is so postapocalyptic that no quotation marks or narrative commas have survived. McCarthy also leaves out apostrophes from most contractions that occur in narrative (he uses them in dialogue), but uses them in less frequently-occurring contractions (like "he'd"). This inconsistency helps McCarthy's style come off as pretentious. How is it, exactly, that these literary types like McCarthy get away with disregarding the rules of punctuation and syntax so egregiously? It's pretentious any way you slice it.
Ultimately, The Road is more than the sum of its parts, and that, I suppose, is one of the things that makes good writing. Yes, it's pretentious, but it's also vivid and memorable.
Good, but depressing. October 15, 2008
I had a dream last night that a guy raped me and I blew up his house while I was still in it...... and I died.
I think the dream was inspired by the book "The Road" because everything looked like that book felt.
 Simply Put, A Masterpiece October 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Post apocalyptic fiction is my favorite genre. I can safely say that I've read them all... though I'm always on the hunt for ones I might have missed.
I read "The Road" well over a year ago and had subsequently gotten the audio book version for work. Both very good.
"The Road" stands apart from all others that I've read within the post apocalyptic genre. You can say that I have read them all. But this one is different. While I hate the cliched "Instant Classic" stamp on reviews for books, in this case, its true. Aside from the popular notice of today... I couldn't care less that this was on Oprah's List... This book is great as a current read but even more, in time, this book will be remembered and valued as a major contribution.
A must read for post apocalyptic fiction is "Alas Babylon." That book was written decades ago. It is timeless and has many themes that makes you think, even haunts you, long after you had read the last page.
"The Road" does the same. It makes you think and feel. But more than that, there is a profound beauty. Not just in the relationship between father and son but in the words crafted to tell the story. This writer reminded me a lot of Steinbeck where it was just a joy to see the English language turned into an art form. There were so many wonderful phrases and beautifully worded descriptions. That's why I had gotten the audiobook. You want to revisit the story and just hear the words. And the reference to Steinbeck is not trivial. This author's command over words is profound and beautiful.
I won't say much about the storyline other than it is interesting and touching. The events keep you interested but its the relationship between father and son that keeps you reading. And yet, its much more than that! The ending is emotional and has struck me personally more than the vast majority of other books. That emotion is just as strong upon subsequent reading or hearings of the audio version.
Now, I've read many reviews of this book that have delved into literary analysis. Many of which are very interesting points. Some of which I am not sure the writer had intended. But nevertheless, that is a mark of a great book... it makes people think and draw conclusions or relate to other great works. There's actually a debate going on within the reviews about philosophical points and references.
In high school and college, there was required reading and analysis. I've long wondered how much was intended by the author versus how much was extrapolated by readers. In the end it doesn't matter because there is a universe of discussion that had started from somewhere. Later on, half of the dimension is a product of the discussion.
This is one of those books. On a surface level, it is a satisfying read. But going deeper, there is so much more. This is one of those books that will be discussed for years. It will be interesting to see what the conventional consensus becomes.
Thus, this book is a masterpiece. Unlike most books, it's words don't stay confined within the pages. You will find yourself thinking about it long afterwards.
A Morality Play October 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Road (Movie Tie-in Edition) (Vintage International) is a morality play. A man and his son move along a road seeking surcease from evil. From this simple premise, McCarthy shapes an unforgettable novel that plumbs the depths of our communal soul.
I am pleased that there are men in the world like Cormac McCarthy. He understands the nature of evil and reveals it for what it is. One perceptive reviewer compared McCarthy to an Old Testament prophet, and that quality is what sets the author apart. This work is permeated by a steely morality, the like of which is seldom seen in this society. The novel is profound, terrifying, and starkly beautiful. Read it.
 Lit-Horror Again October 15, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a straightforward tale about the end of the world. And basically that is that. Instead of ghost and zombies the characters face a cataclysmic event. These people survive and no more. Basically this is 'Blindness' where again civilization collapses and that is that. 'Blindness' is a little more up beat as the blindness does pass. The point of 'The Road' seems to be that survival is pointless. This is a nihlistic work. Lit-Horror has swept bookworld and here is yet another example.
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