The Road (Oprah's Book Club)
The Road (Oprah's Book Club)
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Cormac McCarthy
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Product Details

  • Author: Cormac McCarthy
  • Binding: Paperback
  • Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
  • EAN: 9780307387899
  • ISBN: 0307387895
  • Label: Vintage Books
  • Language: English
  • Manufacturer: Vintage Books
  • Number of Items: 1
  • Number of Pages: 287
  • Product Group: Book
  • Publication Date: 2007-03-28
  • Publisher: Vintage Books
  • Release Date: 2007-03-28
  • Studio: Vintage Books
  • Title: The Road (Oprah's Book Club)
Avg Customer Rating: 4 stars

Product Description: 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





Customer Reviews


4 stars Haunting and disturbing
This story will stay with you for days. Reading it is not pleasant, the closest I've ever experienced a nightmare in print, but it is haunting and deeply disturbing.


5 stars Fantastic
I don't think that I have ever read such a unique book. The Road is an amazing book that keeps you turning the pages without being a thriller or a mystery. It is also fun to analyze. I had read only two pages when I realized that this is one of those books that you have to read with a pencil in your hand. There are so many sentences to underline, words to circle, and places to add your own thoughts into the margines.


5 stars A masterpiece
I haven't read for pleasure in several years due to my hectic lifestyle. However this novel was highly recommended to me from several friends, so I thought I would just skim through the pages.
Less than two chapters in, I was simply amazed by such literature and detail that McCarthy entails. A true classic that will be treasured for years.


5 stars Bleak and Inspiring
Although I found this book to be depressing and miserable, I couldn't put it down. It has left its mark on me as one of the most memorable books I have ever read. If you are a writer, there is so much to be learned from reading a book of this quality. Thankyou Cormac McCarthy.


3 stars NOT a book for the clinically depressed!
I am a HUGE Cormac McCarthy fan. I've read many of his works so I know well his often dark subject matter. However this is, in my opinion, by far the darkest. I completely agree with s.j.'s earlier assessment; it is exactly like 'falling down a deep, dark hole'. Most likely because this stark and morose book offers little hope for humanity. BUT, I am glad I read it...bleak as it may be. Certainly not a read for everyone though. If you are already on depression meds--stay away!


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