THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy

ISBN: 978-0330447546 (UK)  978-0307476302 (USA)

"The clocks stopped at 1:17. A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions... A dull rose glow in the window-glass."

I had wanted to read this book for a while, so I was delighted to receive it for Christmas last month. It seemed a strange choice to begin reading among the tinsel and fairy lights of holiday cheer, but the book drew me in both with its post-apocalyptic premise and the immediate tension in the opening pages.

The main characters are never named, they are simply the man and the boy. Also unnamed is the catastrophic even that brought about the apocalypse some years earlier, forcing them to travel south on the road -- a relic of the living world, an ash covered highway -- after the death of the boy's mother. They are heading for the coast, trying to escape the cold northern winter while constantly seeking food which has all but disappeared. Plants and animals alike have died out, and savage gangs roam the road, raping, murdering, and cannibalizing anyone who strays into their paths.

The narrative is bleak and episodic, and the language terse. There are many missing apostrophes and no quotation marks, and occasionally there are words that run together. It's like the degeneration of society is reflected within the prose. As the rules of law and society have fallen, the rules of language are following suit and crumbling.

The world of The Road is a world of stress: the constant hunger, the bitter cold, and the marauding gangs all threaten to destroy the fragile thread of life to which man and boy cling. Yet even in this ash-gray, sunless landscape there glimmers the smallest shred of hope, enough to persuade the reader to continue the brutal, unforgiving journey with man and boy. "You have to carry the fire," the man tells the boy. The fire is their fragile humanity. It is this that endears the two characters to the reader.

Against the grayness of the post-apocalyptic wasteland, a few moments of joy stand out. The man finds the boy an ancient but intact can of Coca Cola. "It's bubbly," the boy says in surprise. In another scene they have found a flare gun, which the man agrees to fire into the sky. "It could be like a celebration," the boy says.

I really enjoyed this book, if "enjoyed" is the right word for something so bleak. I went into an empty room to read the last few pages; I wanted to be somewhere quiet where I could absorb the ending properly, and then think about it for a few minutes. I think that's the sign of a great book. A great book will stay with you for a few days after you finish it, and this one did.  

About a week after reading this novel I went to see the film version. It was much as I had imagined it in the book: colorless landscapes of gray and white, with occasional bright splashes of blood. The film followed the original narrative closely, with only a few scenes changed. Overall the movie seemed much more hopeful than the book, as it seemed to suggest a possible recovery of nature -- in one scene the boy finds a live beetle -- but without losing the intensity and suspense of the novel. 

It isn't surprising that Cormac McCarthy won a Pulitzer Prize for The Road. It's a powerful tale about the fire within us that makes us human, and what can happen when that fire goes out.