The Road

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Holy Cow.  Seriously.  This book blew my mind.  My mind is officially blown.  Whoo.  I don't really even have words.  I have been sitting on this review for a few days so that I could digest this book and think about everything that I had just finished reading and then I went back and reread quite a bit of the book again.  And after the second reading I had to redigest what I read again.  Now I am exhausted and I hope that the apocalypse doesn't happen tonight because I am emotionally spent after reading The Road.  On top of all the darkness that is The Road, Cormac McCarthy has written a beautiful piece of work, the imagery and depth of feeling in this book is remarkable.  Seriously y'all.  My mind is blown.  Thank you thank you Greg (over at The New Dork Review of Books) for putting this book on my radar.  I owe you a good book suggestion now!

The Road is a story of survival, dystopia, the love between a parent and their child, and also a little bit about hope.  It takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where vegetation and animals are extinct, the sun doesn't shine through the fall out ash, and the few people that are left roaming the land are DANGEROUS.  You follow the story of father and son that are headed south on The Road hoping that when they get to their undetermined destination something will be at the other end.  All the while they are trying to survive and "carry the fire" (the phrase that symbolizes goodness through out the book) even though the odds aren't in their favor.  Food is scarce, roving gangs of cannibals are everywhere, and the climate is HARSH.  The end of this crazy story is AMAZING!!!!  I was freaking the heck out when I read the last few pages, and I think that is when I can pin point when my mind became blown.

Something that I though was so appropriate was the fact that McCarthy didn't name his characters.  They were simply referred to as the man and the boy.  In a time where identity isn't important anymore it just fit perfectly.  I don't know that another story could be told with out character names.  At least not as well as The Road was.  In most reviews on this book you will read about how the landscape was a character in this book and I have to agree.  McCarthy painted a pretty bleak picture of what a post-apocalyptic world would look like.  I don't really know if you could have anything BUT a bleak picture of a post-apocalyptic world but McCarthy executes it superbly.  I devour dystopic and post-apocalyptic survival stories but The Road is by far the cream of the crop when it comes to this genera.  It won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 and it surely deserved it.

There is so much I would love to discuss about this book but I can't do that with out giving away some spoilers so I am letting you know if you are reading and don't want the book to be spoiled stop reading this next paragraph.  I am going to just run through my mind blowing thought and then I am going to stop.  So don't read further if you don't want to know about then end....

OK, so at the end when the man dies and the boy steps out on the road and sees the man in the yellow parka.  The yellow parka man mentions that his group had been watching the man and the boy for a while.  It killed me that the whole time the boy and the man had been headed south to find "the good guys" and "the good guys" were behind them the entire time.  I don't know why this blew my mind, the irony in that just killed me.  After all that happened why couldn't they have figured that out before.  Then I was thinking that when the man and the boy were in the town where the boy saw the other little boy and he wanted to go back and make sure that the other little boy wasn't lost and scared, could that have been the same group?  The yellow parka man mentions that he has a little boy and a little girl.  Also something else that intrigued me was the way the boy was somewhat religious though religion was all but gone by the time he was born.  "Carrying the Fire" to me was kind of an ichthys symbol of "the good" or of God.  There are so many other little questions I would like a second opinion on.  Geez.

BOOK vs. MOVIE:  There is a movie of The Road that has fairly new and I have't had the chance to see it yet.  Actually I can't find it anywhere.  But I can't wait to get my hands on it because I am sure it is more intense than the book.  The book was intense but if you could see the pictures unfold in front of your eyes I would believe that it would be an edge of your seat kinda movie.  I'll review the movie when I finally find a copy to watch.

RATING: 5 Stars

3 More Reviews on The Road:

The New Dork Review of Books 

{Insert Suitably Snappy Title Here}

About Writing

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

ISBN 0307476316

Pages: 304

If you liked The Road you should try: The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood

Book Club {review of The Handmaid's Tale}

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So yesterday was our first official meeting as a Book Club!  It was so much fun!!!  It looks like we will have about 14 lovely ladies in all and the dynamics seem very good.  We read and discussed The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood and everyone had a lot to say about the themes, plot lines, and characters.  This book has a lot to talk about so the meeting started at 7pm and after about 30min. of chatting, snacking, and a little wine we started our discussion.  We wrapped up around 9:45 and I am sure we could have chatted for another hour at least!

The main topic of conversation stemmed on the fact that we decided this could actually happen and how easily.  At first there were some in the group that didn't think it would be possible but then one girl mentioned the Holocaust and how millions of Jewish people throughout an entire continent were rounded up and forced to live a certain way, families torn apart, millions killed.  I mentioned that it would be easy for every debit and credit card belonging to a female to be "turned off" of be considered invalid (just like the compucards in The Handmaid's Tale) and seeing as we only carry little bits of cash (if any) in our purses what would be able to do then?  At by the end of the discussion I think everyone decided that these things happening in The Handmaid's Tale could infact become a reality today.

Another thing we talked about for quite a while is whether we would want to be Marthas, Wives, or Handmaids.  We decided that NONE of us wanted to be Wives and most of us wanted to be Marthas.  We also decided that we might be more rebellious than Offred had been.

Over all I think the discussion was very interesting and I think we will do well as a group.  I can hardly wait until next month!!!

The Handmaid's Tale - Book Club Read

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So this evening I finished The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.  I have read this book before but I suppose I had forgotten the details because I felt like I was reading it for the first time.  I could only sort of remember what was going to happen next so when the story unfolded it was like reading it anew!  I had to read this one for my book club and I am sure that it will encourage a lot of discussion because of the controversial nature of this story (I will post the outcome of the discussion next week after our meeting).  I kind of have a love/hate relationship with Margaret Atwood.  I feel that she is a very important writer in literary history and I went through a time when I owned all her novels (even her collections of short stories) but I started to really dislike her writing style after reading about 6 or so of her novels.  Sometimes she would capture my attention and her writing (The Blind Assassin)was organized and easy to read and other times I felt she rambled and there was no point to the story she was trying to tell (The Robber Bride).  The Handmaid's Tale was one of the stories that I could fallow without boredom and while the ending isn't really satisfying, the story as a whole does make sense.

In The Handmaid's Tale we are introduced to a society that has taken hold after the fall of The United States.  A new government takes power and they are totally and staunchly biblically based.  Women loose all their rights including the right to read the written word, and they are kept as possessions of the men either as Wives, Handmaids (birthing machines), or Marthas (servants).  This book is the story of one Handmaid named Offred (a name given to her meaning possession Of Fred), it is told from her point of view, and it is the story of her life as a first generation Handmaid in the new land of Gilead.  Because she is a first generation Handmaid she remembers life as it was before the fall of the U.S. so it makes it much harder for her to adjust to her new life as a Handmaid her "Commanders" house.

I remember enjoying this book a lot when I read it the first time and I feel the same about it now.  It really is interesting to see a glimpse into society once life as we know it is over. Could these things really happen?  Would we as a society let them?  Maybe stories like The Hunger Games, The Handmaids Tale, and The Giver are a warning to us all.

Book vs. Movie:  There is a movie version of The Handmaid's Tale but judging by the pictures I have seen online it looks like a movie I am going to miss.  It was made in the early 90s and it doesn't look too promising.  If someone were to make a newer version of this movie I would absolutely go see it, just for a more visual idea of what Gilead and the Handmaid's looked like.  There is also an Opera about The Handmaid's Tale and I think that would be very interesting!

The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood
ISBN: 978-0-385-49081-8


If you liked this book than read:  The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins