I brought a book with an instinctive curiosity lurking around the corner to find a copy of The Road, and it was simply brilliant for what it gave me—if you want a book where the end makes you think “He really cared about his son” then you’ve managed to walk beyond the realm of thinking “These characters feel two dimensional” or how the plot is simply a linear trip that follows a man and his son travel by foot to the coast in a post-apocalyptical where. You’ll end up feeling the latter. But the ending did something that went beyond the interchangeable characters, I was sad about the father and son bond being broken by death itself because of how they represented survival that kept humanity.

The tale is simple and it doesn’t need to be with it simply this: “Father and son are travelling by foot to the coast”. I want to write more about the plot but there isn’t anything beyond it— no plot twists that entwine with a subplot to help expand on complex themes—the book is only about a journey of a man and his son as they try to survive in a post-apocalyptical world.

We never learn what happened to world anywhere in the book, even when we get a brief glimpse into the past of the father character. The book strength lays in its vagueness towards the characters history which helps lead our attention to the father-son bond present throughout.

Reading it over two days let me realise it was opposite to something Stephen King would write—as in it doesn’t make use of multiple analogies every second word till I question how he came up with that analogy to know it worked as one. A whole book travels smoothly with description that are direct to give a idea of what he’s doing instead of referring to something unconnected (something Stephen King seems to do on quota) but just holding firmly to the getting across the now of the book. Although one complaint I would have about the book is Cormac McCarthy seems to have missed out speech marks or a clear description of who’s speaking at a point where a third person joins the fray, so you might become lost along the way in places.

The characters are few and never grow beyond presenting the theme, but regardless the father-son bond always stood firmly in my mind towards the end—what the father represented of survival in the face of a world dead with no hope, but all the time walking onwards for the sake of his son.

The book is simply written but masterfully crafted to convey the ideas of survival existing in the form of a fathers love to keep himself and his son alive. Please buy this book and enjoy something that knows how to bring you to feel sorrow at the end without feeling empty or anticlimactic.

Thought of the Day: August 22nd:

I actually had this strong streak of doubt at how little I’ve written for something I want to write…..it feels unfair at how little I can write of it compared to how much I have to offer.