« Order of the Stick | Main | It's funny how much we have in common . . . »
July 10, 2007
The Road
[I used to have a special Book Blog, but that doesn't seem to be working, so I'm just going to post this over here.]
This book gave me nightmares, and made me seriously think about buying a gun. But for a Cormac McCarthy novel, it's downright uplifting.
That said, whereas most post-apocalyptic novels are, in part at least, about beginnings, this one is only about endings. Sarah TW introduced me to a mantra that’s useful in reading this book: “There’s no hope in a Cormac McCarthy novel,” which is kind of fascinating in itself. What kind of value is possible beyond the point at which hope ends? It turns out that there’s quite a lot, actually, if you look in the right places.
At first I thought that this book could be well compared to Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood -- another post-apocalyptic novel that I enjoyed -- but now I think it actually has more in common with Robert Altman’s film of A Prairie Home Companion -- which is about the messy overlap of love and death.
(For the record, you can get a paperback version without the Oprah logo if you send your brother to Australia to buy one for you. Thanks Rob!)
Posted by Drew at July 10, 2007 12:11 PM