This is an amazing book and a must-read. Period. Nothing much can be added to that. The Road tells the story of a father-and-son trying to survive in a ravaged, desolate country after an almost-biblical apocalypse. The story has many harrowing, desperate parts; others, are so completely illuminated with the last glimmers of humanity that they really touch you, even in this jaded age. Actually, I'd be hard-pressed to recall other book I read lately that has gotten so under my skin like this one did.
I remember reading All The Pretty Horses and dismissing McCarthy as a Western novelist. That is one of the reasons I never picked the Border Trilogy novels. Now I feel I'd like to read No Country For Old Men, just to reevaluate. I may have been missing a great author.

This book leaves the reader much the same way it finds its protagonists: Cold, worried, uncertain of anything, and stranded in the dark. In the sense that it makes you feel much like the characters do (for there is very little illumination in this dark tale), it is a great success, but ultimately nothing is resolved in the story itself.

One cannot help but get the feeling that the dramatic scenes were intended to shock, but somehow they end up being unsatisfying--perhaps in the sense that, if this is the extremity of desperation the characters find themselves in, they certainly don't show it much.

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