On the road with Cormac McCarthy
Posted in SF |
Technically, it wasn’t on the road. I read the book in bed. But ‘in bed with Cormac McCarthy’ sounded too lame, and didn’t include the book title in an oh so clever pun (I wonder how many newspapers also used this title).
Last year I heard some guy called McCarthy won the Pulitzer. Good for him, now what’s for dinner? I don’t care for literary awards very much, my backlog of books is too big to let me worry about new things that don’t sound extraordinary.
But then a friend of mine (who knows about my love of books where half the population of the globe dies), told me it was a post-apocalyptic story - and a damn good one. Fast forward a couple of months later, I finally read The Road.
In short: I liked it. I didn’t love it.
It was scary sometimes, heartbreaking at others, intriguing at times… However, I missed some background. I’m sure this was the author’s intention, not to offer any clue about the catastrophe that left the States (the world?) almost deserted, but I wanted more clues. Maybe it’s a mainstream thing? If you explain it, it become SF, if you don’t, it’s “real literature”? It reminds me of Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things, same kind of story of a cataclysm with no explanation whatsoever.
Anyway, I had fun trying to piece things together with the clues we did have. Father plus child travel through the USA. How old is the boy? He was born after the disaster, but he seems mature, so he must be… at least 10? Can two people survive like that for 10 years? Or even 5? Years of living on the run, with no proper shelter, and the man only got pneumonia or TB or whatever now? A bit hard to believe, really.
What I liked about the books was the survival parts. I find it fascinating to read about the ways people manage to survive (mentally and physically) in harsh conditions. (That’s probably one of the main reasons I like PA fiction.) I got caught up in the tension: will they find food? can such good luck last? will they reach the end of their journey? The atmosphere was extremely well done, to the point that I only read the book when I wasn’t alone in the house because it was too difficult to get out of the atmosphere by myself.
I also thought that end was very good. Maybe I’m a sucker for happy endings, but I really feel it was a good conclusion. Life goes on… Maybe it was too much of a coincidence to be really believable, but it was fitting in a more symbolic way.
All through the book I was reminded of other post apocalyptic novels. I have this mental image of the end of King’s Cell, with the main character and his young son in the woods, and The Road strongly reminded me of it. I also thought about Robert McCammon’s Swan Song while reading, but I can’t put my finger on the connection.
But since we’re comparing… there are much better post-apocalyptic books out there. I just mentioned Swan Song. King’s Stand is amazing (but the also-mentioned Cell isn’t). The use of language in The Road didn’t particularly thrill me. McCarthy managed to make me feel the desolation very well, but so did other writers. I don’t know how books get chosen for the Pulitzer, but this one didn’t blow me away. It was a very enjoyable* read, but that’s it.
* In this case, “enjoyable” only means it was a page turner; you can’t exactly enjoy such a depressing book.
