| In Association With... |  |
|
|
|
The Road (Oprah's Book Club) | 
 enlarge | Author: Cormac Mccarthy
Publisher: Vintage Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $3.73
You Save: $11.22 (75%)
New (125) Collectible (2) from $5.68
Avg. Customer Rating:  1554 reviews
Sales Rank: 108
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 287
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 4.8 x 1
ISBN: 0307387895
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307387899
ASIN: 0307387895
Publication Date: March 28, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Good, used copy. No writing in text. Some cover wear present. Ships daily (M - Sat). FREE usps delivery confirmation number.
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Best known for his Border Trilogy, hailed in the San Francisco Chronicle as "an American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century," Cormac McCarthy has written ten rich and often brutal novels, including the bestselling No Country for Old Men, and The Road. Profoundly dark, told in spare, searing prose, The Road is a post-apocalyptic masterpiece, one of the best books we've read this year, but in case you need a second (and expert) opinion, we asked Dennis Lehane, author of equally rich, occasionally bleak and brutal novels, to read it and give us his take. Read his glowing review below. --Daphne Durham
Guest Reviewer: Dennis Lehane
 Dennis Lehane, master of the hard-boiled thriller, generated a cult following with his series about private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, wowed readers with the intense and gut-wrenching Mystic River, blew fans all away with the mind-bending Shutter Island, and switches gears with Coronado, his new collection of gritty short stories (and one play).
Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehane
Product Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER
National Book Critic's Circle Award Finalist
A New York Times Notable Book
One of the Best Books of the Year
The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times, New York, People, Rocky Mountain News, Time, The Village Voice, The Washington Post
The searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-—and each other.
The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 1549 more reviews...
 The End Is Near September 29, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I won't try to rehash the plot of the story. Others have done a very good job of retelling Cormak McCarthy's astounding story of love, survival and a "how to" manual for when you find yourself at the end of civilation as we know it. I took notes.
This is not a happy story. I don't believe that McCarthy has a funny bone in his body. But this story stayed with me long after I finished reading and that, my friends, is what I call a good book. Thought provoking, scary and slightly hopeful, "The Road" gives a mini lesson in what it means to be human and imperfect and how we ultimately manage to live our lives.
Savage and Beautiful September 26, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Road is one of the best works of fiction I have read in many years. It is a story of raw physical survival. While the catastrophe which occurred is never named, the description fits perfectly that of the "nuclear winter" predicted by scientists to follow a nuclear war. This is not however, a postapocalyptic vision in the tradition of "Mad Max" and a hundred other B movies. It is a realistic view of a father's love for his young son, and the things he must do to try to protect him and keep him alive in this nightmare landscape. At once stark, disturbing, heartbreaking, beautiful, and thought provoking, it is a story which has lingered in my mind long after finishing it.
 Redundant and boring September 26, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
A man and his child walk and find some food. They walk some more and find more food.I basically just described the whole book.
One of the most boring and redundant books I've ever read. There is probably 10 pages of interaction between the main characters and other people. Every time you think something is getting ready to happen the book disappoints you. I have no idea why this book was so highly recommended.
It only received two starts because of how well it was written. Other than that, there is nothing to this book besides two people walking around for 280 pages.
This Book Will Break Your Heart in All the Right Ways September 25, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read this book on a reccomendation by a friend who knew I love well thought out, not action-type post-apocalyptic literature. I was surprised it was by this author, knowing of his past works, and was skeptical going in. I was very wrong! We begin in the middle of a desolate life in a desolate world with two characters struggling every day of their miserable lives to survive and continue on. The decisions and confrontations they face literally made me put the book down a few times to simple let the information process and resound within me. Maybe many of us feel that, in the event of war such as this, that in the aftermath we could survive but this book takes into account the reality of what that world would look like - no food, slow death by radiation, and what becomes of a society that is forced to live in a future without said food and the constant reality of fighting for the last resources, the unreplacable canned food stashes, and the choice of cannibalism.
As a tale of father and son, it is also quite remarkable - the choices a parent would be forced to make, while trying to shield ones children from the horrific reality that exists all around.
If I have one criticism, it is in how the book is wrapped up - I won't give anything away, but it just seemed a little contrived and not very realistic - in fact, it was almost as if the author himself couldn't face the reality of the situation.
Good, haunting, thought provoking work.
A Briliant Trek Into Desolation September 25, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Being a lover of all things post-apocalyptic, be they movies (Children of Men, Handmaid's Tale) or books (Oryx and Crake) and also of McCarthy's spare but rich writing, this book did not disappoint. Told in short, lush sentences--like a parched throat overwhelmed by a single draught of water--the book journeys across the seared and destroyed country with one man and his son, both holding up and questioning moral absolutism in various forms (killing people for the purpose of eating them is wrong, killing people to protect yourself is acceptable.)
It explores the nature of love and how it appears from various perspectives. What can appear as selfishness or cruelty to one person is love to another. What could lead to death or endangerment is love for yet another. As with the main characters and their journey, there is no map or compass given to the reader with which to navigate human nature.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
