The Road

Book : The Road by Cowan McCarthy.
From Wiki : The Road is a 2006 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. It is a post-apocalyptic tale of a journey taken by a father and his young son over a period of several months, across a landscape blasted by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed all civilization and, apparently, most life on earth. The novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006.

The Plot :
DO NOT READ if u want to read this book !!!

The Road follows a man and a boy, father and son, journeying together for many months across a desolate, post apocalyptic landscape, some years – the period of time almost the same as the age of the boy – after a great, unexplained cataclysm. Civilization has been destroyed, and most species have become extinct. The sun is obscured by deep, dark clouds, and the climate has been altered radically. Plants do not grow. Humanity consists largely of bands of cannibals, their food-source captives, and refugee-travelers who scavenge for food. Remnants of corpses are seldom seen.

Ash covers everything; it is in the atmosphere, it obscures the sun and moon, and the two travelers breathe through improvised masks. Plants and animals are apparently all dead (dead wood for fires is plentiful), and the rivers and oceans are seemingly empty of life. Very rarely do the man and boy encounter any sign of non-human life.

The boy's mother, pregnant with him at the time of the cataclysm, was overwhelmed by the desperate and apparently hopeless situation and has committed suicide some time before the story begins. Her explanation, offered by her as a pragmatic view, was that they would all be raped, killed and then eaten, and that there was no hope left for a different fate. She welcomes death with open arms. The father however, although bitter, is determined to ensure the survival of their child, a source of hope. The man is literate, well-traveled, and knowledgeable about machinery, as well as woodcraft, and human anatomy. It is hinted that he might have once been "a doctor or something". He is alert, attentive and aware, and applies all he knows to anticipating and overcoming the challenges he knows are ever-present. He realizes that he and his young son cannot survive another winter in their present location, so the two set out across what was once the Southeastern United States, largely following the highways. They aim to reach warmer southern climates and the sea in particular. Along the way, threats to the duo's survival create an atmosphere of sustained terror and tension.

The father coughs blood every morning and knows he is dying. He struggles to protect his son from the constant threats of attack,exposure, and starvation, as well as from what he sees as the boy's innocently well-meaning but dangerous desire to help the other wanderers they meet. They carry a pistol with two bullets, meant for suicide should it become necessary; the father has told the son to kill himself rather than be captured, although he fears that the boy will not do it when needed. The father struggles constantly with the knowledge that he will have to kill his son when they are captured to prevent him from suffering a more horrific fate, such as becoming a chained catamite held captive by a marauding band. The man and the boy encounter such things as a band of captives locked in a basement, their limbs gradually harvested by their captors for meat and a decapitated human infant being roasted on a spit. This only hardens the man's resolve.

In the face of all of these obstacles, the man and the boy have only each other (they are "each the other's world entire"). The man maintains the pretense, and the boy holds on to the real faith, that there is a core of ethics left somewhere in humanity. They repeatedly assure one another that they are (among) "the good guys," who are "carrying the fire."

In the end, having brought the boy south after extreme hardship but without finding the salvation he had hoped for, the father succumbs to his illness and dies, leaving the boy alone on the road. Three days later, however, the grieving boy encounters a man who has been tracking the father and son. This man, who has a wife and two children of his own, invites the boy to join his family. The passing mention of one child being a daughter implies that an eventual adolescent pairing for the boy is possible, the first and only ray of hope given in the storyline regarding the future of humanity. The narrative's close also suggests that the wife is a God-fearing and compassionate woman, who treats the boy well, a resolution that vindicates the dead father's determination to stay alive and keep moving as long as possible.

Comment :
GOOOOD BOOK !!!!
The dialogue is simple eventhough mention no name at all, and also no quotation marks at all.
The story is easy to understand, but somehow depressing to imagine about living in the world like that.
Haven't read a book this good in such a long time.
The ending is satisfying, because it's clear on what's happening.

Score :
9/10