Cormac McCarthy - Road

Pros: Story of love and hope against all odds; writing style

Cons: None

The Bottom Line: This book gives us a view of what will happen if mankind continues on current paths of destruction.

Review: I don't always get to watch the Oprah Winfrey show but I happened to see it when she named "The Road" her book of the month. McCarthy is one of my favorite modern authors, so I immediately bought the book. One of the reasons I like McCarthy so much is ...

Pros: powerful, sad, thought-provoking, and chilling

Cons: a frightening post-apocalyptic view

The Bottom Line: Cormac McCarthy tries his hand at writing post-apocalyptic fiction in The Road. The resulting blend of grim worldview and ghastly subject is powerful and, above all, chilling.

Review: The Road - Cormac McCarthyIn some not so distant future the unnamed man and boy shamble slowly across a bleak, ashen landscape, headed toward the shore of an unnamed sea. They are two of the last survivors, a pair of dying ...

Pros: Beautifully written, tender themes in the midst of horror, father-son relationship.

Cons: Some shockingly violent scenes...

The Bottom Line:

Stark, Horrifying, Tender, Beautiful.

Review: Since becoming a father in 2002, I've noticed that there are particular stories...particular genres...that I can't stand watching in films, or reading about in books.  That genre is anything that puts a child--especially a boy--in peril.  Those ...

Pros: touching father-son relationship, the boy's altruism, McCarthy's writing

Cons: lack of quotation marks takes some getting used to, despairing backdrop

The Bottom Line: A starkly beautiful novel about a relationship, a journey and a fool's hope.

Review: During my recent long (yet all-too-short) weekend in Massachusetts with my friends Erica and Art, the subject of movies came up often. As all three of us consider ...

Pros: Great story telling, themes are well developed, interesting and quick

Cons: None

The Bottom Line: "The Road" is a perfect example of modern fiction and proves that Cormac McCarthy may just be getting tuning more into his genius.

Review: This last year of high school I was forced into something I didn’t necessarily have the time for but now that I look back on it and the books I read, it’s safe to say I actually enjoyed being bullied into my school’s Book Club. Now, while I didn’t ...

Pros: The writing, the messages contained

Cons: Some "rules" of grammar are tossed aside, intentionally.

The Bottom Line: This story is heartbreaking and stunningly beautiful. McCarthy has a style and a way with words, that makes this sparse tale wondrous.

Review: This is a different kind of tale, as there is almost no story, as defined by a linear series of significant events, leading to a conclusion. What story there is: a man and his son travel across a post-Apocalyptic America, probably southern California, ...

Pros: The Book of Revelations circles back into the five books of Moses before our eyes.

Cons: I got lost in it. It could have gone on forever.

The Bottom Line: In which the author travels with Father Abraham.

Review: We don't (and we won't) know how it happened, but the world has pretty much ended; and now we are following a nameless man and his nameless son through a nameless country that we can only guess (based on what we observe, in relation to a ...

Pros: An exquisite gem of a novel by one of the greatest writers of American literature.

Cons: None whatever.

The Bottom Line: McCarthy is one of the greatest writers of American fiction, and along with "Blood Meridian, this book is his masterpiece.

Review: "The Road" is a work of stunning, savage, heartbreaking beauty. Set in the post-apocalyptic hell of an unending nuclear winter, Cormac McCarthy writes about a nameless man and his young son, wandering through a world gone crazy; bleak, cold, dark, where ...

Pros: Portrays what the world might come to.

Cons: Dialogue a bit too sparse and repetitive.

The Bottom Line: The novel does give one serious thoughts about what might happen if all hell breaks loose.

Review: In the opening chapter of his book Dynamics of Faith Paul Tillich notes the following about the nature of man. He writes that “Man, like every living being, is concerned about many things, above all about those which condition his very ...

Pros: Everything.

Cons: That one first-person paragraph is a bit unnecessary...

The Bottom Line: walked right down.

Review: They passed through the city at noon of the day following. He kept the pistol to hand on the folded tarp on top of the cart. He kept the boy close to his side. The city was mostly burned. No sign of life. Cars in the street caked with ash, everything ...