IGX

I have never been so emotionaly effected by a book in my life, wheter it be a Stephen King book or one of the hundreds of books I have read of warfare and atrocities, nothing true or fiction has ever done to me what The Road di last night.

It paints a realisticly bleak portrait of America after a full on nuclear war.

It is a nation of ash, death and grey rains. All the trees are dead, all the grass is dead, wildlife is a memory the only food is what existed before the war and the flesh of other survivers.

Many humans seemed to survive, but humanity is dead.

Barbaric "tribes" devoid of humanity, pitty or morality roam the Roads, Rapeing, killing, inslaving and eating those they come across.

A man and his young son are on a journey from what seems to be the edge of the midwest to the southeatern coast, following the roads and trying to avoid the hoards and other survivers, searching for food al0ong the way. They have a shopping cart to hold their supplies and a pistol, with 3 rounds left ( I do think within this time frame guns and ammo would be easier to aquire.) to protect them.

The man, as he is called seems to have been an office worker in the old world, not some survivalist or Warrior like Max Rocktansky. Just a man trying to remeber what he knows about survival and doing the best he can. His Son was born in the day's following the war, all the boy knows is the life they live.

There are no rumours of safe zones, hidden cities of Goverment and civillization or any other slight hopes of other post Apocalypse tales, this is the World's death.

The only bright light is the love of the father and son and the father's resolve to teach his son to survive.

In all this hooror and dispair, I still could not put this book down. I read it in 7 hours, only putting it down once.

I am torn about recomending this book.
On one hand I think it is a fictional tale that could drive home what danger we are really in and how the status que can be shattered. I think it can get people to think and maybe be a little moe resolute in voicing that after the death of the cold war, we should take steps to deny these weapons to any nation that does not allready have them, and to take steps to phase them out of the Nations that allreaduy have them.

On the other hand, this book will fuck people up.

I've got it sitting on my shelf, and I haven't opened it for just that reason.

Darth

Agreed. That book was no fun at all. Hard to recommend, but not because it wasn't "good".

Bill

I'm still pondering the last paragraph.

nafod wrote:I'm still pondering the last paragraph.

Of the book?

3:00 & 5:00

DARTH wrote:

nafod wrote:I'm still pondering the last paragraph.

Of the book?

Yeah, the part about the trout. From the NYTimes review of the book...

Then McCarthy ends with an eloquent lament: a vision of mountain trout that “smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional” in a time gone when the world was becoming; and what had been was “a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again.” And all things “were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”