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| Saturday, June 7, 2008 08:14 PM |
| Book Report - The Road |
 by Fëanor |
Despite my problems with No Country for Old Men (the weird stylistic quirks; the disappointingly lame and cliche moral of the story), I was still impressed with it, and interested in reading more by Cormac McCarthy. And since The Road is being made into a movie soon, and the story sounded interesting to me, I decided to try that book next. But as soon as I started reading it, I thought I'd made a mistake. poppy and I are in a pretty high stress situation right now, which has left us both a bit emotionally fragile, and this book is extremely, extremely depressing. It's a post-apocalyptic story - but this isn't the fun, silly, Mad Max post-apocalypse. McCarthy imagines what would really happen to the world and the people in it if a huge disaster had occurred which wiped out most of the life on Earth and poisoned the rest. The exact nature of the disaster is never explained, because that's not what McCarthy is interested in here; his story is about what comes after death. The plot focuses on a father and his son - a boy who was born on the very eve of the apocalypse. They are traveling down a main road, heading south, with no really clear goal in mind; the hope is that they will somehow find a warmer, safer place with better people in it, but it seems a distant hope at best. There are no animals left, the sun is obscured by smog at all times, the plants are poisoned, everything is covered with ash, and the few people who are left are more likely to rob you, murder you, and eat you than help you. In other words, these characters are living on after the death of the world.
So you can see what I mean about depressing. But McCarthy's writing, as usual, is incredible. He'll explain what's happening in simple, straightforward words, then suddenly introduce a line of stunningly beautiful, poetic language that's full of insight and power. The book has the same stylistic quirk as No Country for Old Men (no quotes), but I'd seen that before so it didn't bother me that much this time. And again it's a novel about an old generation whose world has passed away, and a new generation with a bleak future ahead of it. But it's also about fathers and sons; about letting your child go on and lead his own life; about dealing with loss and tragedy; about remaining human and moral even in an evil, inhuman world. It's an intense, suspenseful, emotional, extremely dark book, so I expected it to have a pretty brutal ending, but in fact the conclusion is about as hopeful as it could be, considering the circumstances - though it is still soaked through with loss and sadness, like the rest of the book.
This is a powerful novel, and I think a better novel than No Country for Old Men, because it has a simpler story but a more complex and meaningful message at its heart. Making it into a film that's as beautiful and poetic will be difficult indeed, because the language in the narrative was such a huge and important part of making the book as good as it is. Still, the right filmmaker could possibly pull it off. I'll be interested to see how it works out. |
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