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The Road
The Road
The Road
Audiobook6 hours

The Road

Written by Cormac McCarthy

Narrated by Tom Stechschulte

4/5

()

About this audiobook

Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2007

America is a barren landscape of smoldering ashes, devoid of life except for those people still struggling to scratch out some type of existence. Amidst this destruction, a father and his young son walk, always toward the coast, but with no real understanding that circumstances will improve once they arrive. Still, they persevere, and their relationship comes to represent goodness in a world of utter devastation.

Bleak but brilliant, with glimmers of hope and humor, The Road is a stunning allegory and perhaps Cormac McCarthy's finest novel to date. This remarkable departure from his previous works has been hailed by Kirkus Reviews as a "novel of horrific beauty, where death is the only truth".

McCarthy, a New York Times bestselling author, is a past recipient of the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. He is widely considered one of America's greatest writers.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherRecorded Books Audio
Release dateMar 15, 2007
ISBN9781436100793
The Road
Author

Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is the author of numerous novels, including Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men, and The Road. He has won the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. His plays include The Stonemason and The Sunset Limited, which was originally performed by Steppenwolf Theatre Company. His screenplay The Counselor was made into a film directed by Ridley Scott and released in 2013.

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  • 5/5
    The Road is bleak and forbidding and utterly beautiful. You know from early on that no happy ending is possible in this desolate future world. Everything is burned to ash, there is little sunlight, nothing growing, only a few desperate souls left alive. And yet, a father keeps going for the sake of his son, born in the aftermath of whatever catastrophe brought down the world.I am a fan of post-apocalyptic stories — what happens after the nuclear war, after the meteor’s impact, after some third world government’s experiments in biological warfare wipe out half the planet. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with as little cause for hope as this one. There is simply nothing left; the ragged bits of humanity that remain have consumed everything that was not burned. In the face of such destruction, you cannot hope to come over a hill and find a green valley. Eventually, the last survivors will consume each other and the world will be a dead rock in space — and yet, people go on. What makes a man keep walking, keep fighting, keep hoping? Is that how he proves his love, or would it be kinder to end it all?Read my full review at When Falls the Coliseum.
  • 4/5
    (Original Review, 2006-09-30)“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”In “The Road” by Cormac McCarthyTo me this novel raises the question in how far literature should be exempt from moral judgements. "It's art!" has never been a good excuse for producing something disturbing. Torture itself can be done artfully and writing a story painful enough to disturb the reader for weeks or more should not be done without a good reason. Sure, we need disturbing, because things can't keep going the way they are. That's why I admire McCarthy's "The Road". But does the abyss of horror have a bottom which we can plumb to dispel the fear that it is bottomless, or is there always a greater horror that need to be explored and we are eventually forced to retreat, beaten and deeply hurt, when we can't take any more. Should we spend our lives engaging with the very worst we can think of, or would we do better to know these things exist and act to keep them down without looking at them to closely?I wonder the same myself especially in the age of the Internet. We used to be somewhat shielded from extreme horror, unless we were directly linked to it or chose to pick up a book such as American Psycho- in that instance we make a definite choice to engage with horror, albeit in a remote, two-dimensional way, i.e. through the pages of a paperback which we can put down at any time.Now, with the careless clicks of our laptops or by simply touching a screen, the world of true horror is laid bare whether it's through terrorists posting its latest horrible execution or mistakenly finding yourself in a very disturbing Twitter feed (done that myself & trying to dislodge it from my brain weeks later...).The distinction between "mythical" and "realistic" is not a bad starting point if we want to write about “The Road” - but it's quickly exhausted in the face of the variety of 'real' and fanciful world-disclosive techniques in literature. “Blood Meridian” is carefully 'realistic' in the sense that, for example, the characters kill and die as people did and do beyond the pale of civility. Because it's so unrelievedly violent and discompassionate, I'd call it "fantastic" or "phantasmagorical" or some such categorization, but McCarthy's sentences and phrases aren't unspooled at the expense of the characters feeding themselves realistically, say, or of the natural verisimilitude of south-western botany and geology, and so on.It's not where Cormack writes about is HOW he writes it. And he writes beautifully.Can true horror really be woven into literature? Or does the horror dominate so that is the only thing we really remember from such books? How do we benefit from immersing ourselves in this horror?I'm not sure.
  • 5/5
    In this austere and brutal post-apocalyptic tale, McCarthy’s prose recreates the desolation and despair that the end of the world has engendered. While the cause of the Earth’s apocalypse is merely hinted at (everything is covered in ash, so nuclear winter is a plausible inference), its effects are inescapable—and they are encapsulated in this tale of a nameless man and his nameless son, their relationship a microcosm of humankind’s struggle to survive—physically, morally, and spiritually—amidst hopelessness and destruction.Everything about this novel is bare—the dialogue, the action, the plot. McCarthy can’t even be bothered to spare quotation marks or apostrophes. The minimalist dialogue lacks the usual stylistic markers of punctuation, and rarely is a speaker identified. The reader is thus obligated to concentrate clearly on the verbal exchanges throughout the novel (the majority of which take place between the man and the boy); the spare prose of these conversations carries weighty subtext, and so few words contain such profound meaning that the prose is elevated to poetic power.The few “action” scenes contained in this tale are genuinely gruesome and brutal—their intensity balances their scarcity—and the reader is left struggling between wanting something to happen (presumably some sign of hope) and dreading whatever might happen next. So few writers can achieve this degree of narrative tension using such minimal style, yet McCarthy has mastered it in devastating fashion.
  • 4/5
    You die inside, but you persevere. Will certainly read more from McCarthy. [
  • 3/5
    I waffled between 2* and 4* so that my 3* rating may be misleading. McCarthy did a marvelous job creating a dystopian world (worthy of 4*) despite the fact that I didn't care for the way the book was written (2*).
  • 4/5
    Wow. The Road is terrifying and powerful and one of the saddest books I've ever read. I think it's burned into my memory forever.
  • 4/5
    This is a bleak tale of father and son wading through the ash of an unspecified apocalypse, trying to survive. It's really depressing and almost painful to read at times, but also beautiful: the descriptions of scenery are lyrical, the love of father for son is poignant and the desire to be "good guys" instead of succumbing to the horrible acts other humans are engaging in and this young boy is forced to witness.One thing I don't get: If there aren't any trees or vegetation still alive, and haven't been for a decade or so, how are they breathing?
  • 5/5
    Beautifully written bleak tale of a man and his son travelling in a post apocalyptic world. the language and emotion in the writing is excellent but what remains with me after reading is what is not said by the author - the back story of the characters is never fleshed out nor is the circumstanes of the apocolypse.
  • 4/5
    So this book is really freaking depressing and I didn't like the ending. It left me feeling unsatisfied which is why I gave it 4 stars.
  • 4/5
    I was surprised that I liked this as much as I did. I'd been avoiding reading it because of the seemingly depressing storyline, but the real story is that of the father/son relationship, which is very loving and extremely hopeful. Recommended.
  • 4/5
    A father and son wanders in a post-apocalyptic landscape, trying to reach warmer climates without falling prey to scavengers. This is extremely harsh and bleak, but strangely loving at the same time. The language is very evocative, almost hypnotic at times, and the dread the pair feels is almost tangible. Haunting might be the right word to decribe it, since the images of the boy and the man will stay on in the readers mind long after the book is finished.
  • 5/5
    This book felt like the post-apocalyptic books of the 50s and 60s that scared the be-jesus out of me when I was in high school. I was actually surprised to see that it was written in 2006, as it feels a generation older than that. Good thing I read this during the day, not while trying to fall asleep at night!The lack of punctuation and the spareness of the language drive the book forward. I felt almost forced to read quickly, while at the same time, dreading what might be coming on the next page. The unmitigated gray and cold weighed it down, denying any possibility of hope. Yet, the relationship of father and son stands out against the hopelessness.
  • 5/5
    In this incredibly sad, moving and yet somehow uplifting story a boy wandering with his father through the ruins of the post-apocalyptic civilisation. It's hard to find any positive things in the book unless the boy's innate and stubborn goodness and humanism. I've never read a book so gray before...
  • 5/5
    McCarthy's new classic of American literature is a poignant exploration of love and fatherhood set against a post-apocalyptic backdrop. It examines human nature, society, religion, and hope. The book is bleak and dystopic, cryptic yet evident. A powerful novel delivered by a master.
  • 4/5
    The Road, the man, the boy. A cold, burnt, godforsaken landscape that stretches forever. This post-apocalyptic story takes us on a lonesome and horrific journey. What catastrophe has happened we don't know, but all animal life seems to have died together with plant life. The fathers reason for existence is his boy - this love drives him on - yet he has lost almost all hope - he knows what it takes to survive but how can he survive and at the same time remain human? What future is there for this boy? The boy in his innocence still reaches out to people he meet, while the father has to teach him to stay away from people who are all potential cannibals. Can they trust anyone - and what is life reduced to without human interaction, love, trust?Also the idea about God comes and goes. The presence of God and the absence of God. Are you there? he whispered. Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God.The writing is sparse, yet powerful. It's not a pleasant read, but thought-provoking. It certainly has made an impact on me.
  • 5/5
    One of the hardest books that I ever ready (emotionally). It took me approximately an entire month to finish reading this book. The Road put me into such a dark place, I could only read a few pages at a time. The book that brought me to Mr. McCarthy. Pure genius.
  • 5/5
    The road talks about the man and the boy on a journey after the earth was attacked ( the book implies an asteroid). Not many people survived, but those who did are own their own with pretty much nothing. Many will find the book to be very gruesome and difficult to read. However, I thought the book brought up a great discussion on the value of education. Everyone is surviving to stay alive, which puts society on the same page. It doesn't matter your level of education because that cannot help you on the road.
  • 4/5
    Cormac McCarthy's writing (and this is my first book of his) is soooo...different from what I am use to. I want to use words like straightforward and uncomplicated to discribe it, but that makes it sound too simple. So, I will add purposeful and poignant and earnest. This might be a peculiar comparison, but it reads like The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. Ideas and thoughts formed into concise sentences without flowery lengthy narritives but made more powerful by each unembleished statement. The dialog is short, barely more than a few words for each back and forth, and at the same time you never feel like more needs to be said. I've read a few reviews complaining of the repetivtivness of the story, well those people were missing the point in my opinion. Survival is repetavtive! People today just bug me sometimes! McCarthy's writing allows the reader to get out of this story when they put into it. I would say it is kind of a revealer of ones inner self.I LOVE this father and son. They both fill the void in the other. They show what one needs for survival, a balance between logic and emotion. There are so many times when you can understand the moral delema they are in, each time they square off as situations arise while on the road. Your heart and sence of justice goes out to both of them. McCarthy shows the struggle of survival and the struggle keeping your humanity, without either truly what is the point?If you're reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, it is not because you're a fun-time-sally! To quote my husband "Its bleak... with moments of sadness". Now, this is for-surely not my typical read. But a friend of mine has this husband, and he's one of those that does not take my reading all to seriously because of all the YA and strong teenage girl POV's and aliens and love triangles that entertain my late night reads. SO, he is always suggesting books that he thinks I might have some interest in, that we can read in tandem, all in an effort to have what he would consider a "Real Literary Discussion". So I gave it a go when he suggested Cormac McCarthy's The Road. My husband was doubtful that I would even finish it and I will admit, I read half, took a break and read two other books and then went back to it. Why? Because it was bleak...with moments of sadness. I started this on my vacation from school, it was overcast and rainy, I was in my jammies, I had a blanket on and every 15 pages or so I felt as if I just wanted to put another blanket on and take a nap (I did actually take a couple of naps). Why? Because this story is bleak...with moments of sadness. Still, it is so worth the read.P.S. The Road might have disturbing subject matter for sensitive readers.
  • 3/5
    This is the classic theme of life as a road. Only this road does not have a beginning that is spelled out, nor a "black and white" ending. The road itself is a horror story, a love story, a story of hope and hopelessness, a reaffirmation that there are good people left in the world. (Except that in this surreal world, even good people have to do despicable things.) McCarthy's imagery is beautiful in a horrible way. All that said, I found the choppy sentence fragments and unpunctuated conversations to be distracting.
  • 4/5
    Oh, The Road. First, I have to admit that spare writing is not typically my style. I'm more of a Hawthorne girl than a Hemingway one. That said, I'm certainly capable of appreciating Hemingway nonetheless, so I don't think that was a major problem. Still, I opened the book and my first thought was- shoot. It's that faux-Western spare prose style. But I carried on.There's been some kind of nuclear (?) holocaust, and the world as we know it is gone. Houses have been abandoned, cities have fallen into ruin, and the few survivors have either joined roving bands of cannibalistic opportunists or found hiding places. A father and his son begin a journey, hoping to find safety and shelter at the end, in a world where hope is almost dead.That's The Road, basically. Sounds cool, right? Post-apocalypse stuff is right up my alley, so once I figured out that that was the situation, I was ready for good times. My problem with the book is that, even though the father is totally paranoid, and convinced that something is going to happen, the worst never quite happens. In a book like The Little Princess, that works. Here, it always felt kind of contrived, to me, when they made some wonderful discovery that would allow them to continue. That made the book really predictable, or more predictable, since I could tell how it was probably going to end from pretty early. So, as far as the story goes, I felt like it was a good, if standard idea, that didn't have any new twists to make it fresh.The characters, I suspect, or their relationship, is what other readers love so much. The whole father-son dynamic. I'm not a parent, so the 'I must fight and kill to protect my little one' urge isn't as much of a draw for me. A truly great book, IMO, would have made that situation just as compelling for me as for anyone else, but this book failed to do so. I felt bad for them guys, but they failed to come alive for me.And then there was the vocabulary. I am a hardcore fan of supervocab. Seriously. I've tried to bring the word 'hubris' back into the conversational lexicon more times that I can count. Usually, I love it when author's throw in some crazy words, either to challenge me or let me say 'ha ha, I knew that one!' The style of this book, however, just really didn't work with the words. As I recall, there was a line about the 'autistic night' and, as I was reading, I thought, wtf? Autistic night? Seriously? Every time one of the words popped up, it stopped me in my tracks, since it felt so out of place. Most of the words were used correctly, as far as definitions go (though there were a few choices with which I disagreed), but stylistically they were all wrong. Right now I'm really wishing I had a copy of the book in front of me, since that would make this a lot clearer, but I already returned it to the library. Alas.So yeah. I didn't think this book was terrible of anything, and I can see why some people would really enjoy it, but I don't think it is a 'great book.' Ie I don't think it will stand the test of time or be passed down as classic literature. One phrase kind of sums up my feelings on both books, and is the linchpin of my modern lit theory: all style and no substance. Which is a shame, since I think both books could have been a lot better if the author had spent a little less time on how cool the style was and a little bit more time making the characters come to life.
  • 5/5
    Powerful and bleak. Extremely economical form tells an unbearably depressing story.
  • 5/5
    Grim but moving, and very believable
  • 3/5
    I like Cormac McCarthy because of his typewriter. I have the same model. Regrettably, I saw the movie version first (with Viggo Mortensen) so there was little left to the imagination. I will have to try another of McCarthy's works. His style is rather brief and I wondered whether the book was somewhat "padded out" and should be called a novella rather than a novel?
  • 4/5
    Several years after some disaster has hid the sun from the earth's surface leaving the country a dark, barren place in which the few who have survived are scrambling for canned food and warmth. The boy and the man walk south on the road in an effort to get warmer over the coming winter and find the ocean, which is simply a goal the man has set out to give the two hope. McCarthy does a good job creating imagery using as little language as possible to do it. There is not much dialog in the book and not much description, but the author allows the reader to create this in their imagination. The book certainly makes you question one's purpose in a time that it is hard to derive any happiness.
  • 5/5
    I had a lot of trouble reading other books by the author but I think this books subject matter and the way it jumped right into the heart of a complex dystopia had me riveted. The authors intense descriptions can be off putting for some readers, but I was hooked. The descriptions just forced the imagery into my mind and made the complex reality of this world come together for me. In this way I don't know if I could watch the movie, given how vivid my picture of the story is.
  • 1/5
    My dad adores McCarthy. I adore dystopian, post-apocalyptic fiction, and my dad's been leaning on me to read this for some time. I've picked it up several times, but no. Just no.

    McCarthy reads, to me, like a low-rent Hemingway- only with more self-conscious intent to Say Something Real. The story's affecting, sure, and a person can't be unaffected by it, especially as a parent. But no. McCarthy's too much but not enough for me.
  • 5/5
    Cormac McCarthy's pulitzer prize (2007) winning novel, The Road, published in 2006 by Knopf feels and reads like a contemporary Catholic morality play.In the good old days (before the Reformation) morality plays were created to instruct listeners on the means of receiving redemption. Personifications of moral attributes prompted the protagonist to choose between good and evil.There are plenty of moral attributes along this road. Perhaps the first we encounter in this post-apocalyptic wasteland is the invisible and absent god of The Man."Will I see you at the last?" he asks the god. "Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul?"Though walking along this particular road (or path) is devastatingly brutal and the reader knows the man and his child would be safer to travel off road, we follow along hoping for salvation.No one has ever said that taking the higher road is easy; in fact, throughout literary history, we see that the higher road is always more difficult.Our heroes are not always crucified (hint), but some come pretty close to it. From Odysseus to Frodo, our heroes tend to suffer brutal trials, but through their quest along that higher moral ground, they come through better for it.And this is where McCarthy diverges from traditional literary hero making. This work is unique in that we know the man is a hero, because of his "good acts", but we're left wondering at the end if he is better for it?In this world, most men revert to animal instincts unless possessing the divine spark, referred to as "carrying the fire."Those who do not carry the fire become cannibals. In one case, a family keeps prisoners in a basement, harvesting at will.The boy in his role as a moral attribute is his father's conscience. He asks reassurance on occasion that they are "the good guys". His father assures him they are. On the boy's prompting, they pray thanks to those who have left provisions, treat an wandering old man to dinner.In The Road, our hero's task is to protect the boy while also adhering to the code he's bound to. "We will not eat people," he tells his son.He is bound by love and committment to his son, but also by a rigid moral code that may at some point in time demand he sacrifice the child. (sound familiar?)Though he questions himself throughout the story, whether he has the mettle to take his child's life, "Can you do it?" he asks, "When the time comes?"The themes in the work do encompass environmental degradation, suicide, infanticide and cannibalism, but the most important and prevalent message McCarthy leaves this reader with, is a simple lesson those old plays tried to teach. No matter the circumstances, no matter how bad it gets, we make choices. We can choose to take the higher road. It may be tougher (and it most certainly will be), but perhaps we'll come out better for it.
  • 4/5
    McCarthy takes readers into a post-nuclear apocalypse using third-person narrative that follows a father and son's relentless plight through a charred world. The struggle for survival against cannibalism, filth, and weather befalls these main characters as they stay determined to travel an abandoned road to the open sea. Some may be inclined to stop reading halfway through the book as the outcome of these two weary souls seems obvious. However, if one continues to read the nightmare, one can discover a small beacon of hope that makes the story worthwhile. Reviewers criticize McCarthy for his free style dialogue without standard punctuation (There are no quotations or apostrophes for contractions). Also the plot line is fragmented, leaving the reader in dead-end flashbacks and existential musings. The nihilistic tone of the author can be demanding on readers, but this dystopic story is redeemable through descriptions of stark-and-dark imagery, the growing relationship between father and son, and the riveting pace of the scenes, which all keep the novel firmly intact. McCarthy achieves a vivid piece of literature that makes anyone consider how to survive a global nuclear disaster.
  • 5/5
    The narration of "The Road" is devoid of unneccesasry words and punctuations. The way it was written was so simple but the story itself was so deep and profound. This is not just a post-apocalyptic book. This is not just about THE END of the world. Its a love story, a love between father and son. Without so many words, Mr. McCarthy has been able to transcend time, place and pages to make you feel that UNCONDITIONAL love. His writing style reminds me of Saramago's but this one is so simple that its so easy to "feel" and relate to. i would recommend this book to everyone and make sure you bring tissues with you.
  • 5/5
    A man and his son are trekking across the remnants of America towards the coast in a post-apocalyptic world. "The Road" they walk is miserable, savage and highly dangerous. As they walk they encounter scorched ruins from the old world; homes that have been searched for any useful items or food, stores that have been scavenged of everything including the shopping carts and charred and frozen corpses that have been exposed for years.As "the man" and "the boy" walk they encounter many hazards and dangers; they are exposed to the elements and must find ways to stay warm, they are constantly on the brink of starvation and they must hide from people who would steal from them and cannibals that would steal their lives.This is a dreary, haunting read but surprisingly beautiful. McCarthy uses his austere prose to describe the details of their miserable existence with undertones of love and hope within all the despair. The love of father and son keeps them walking longer than they might have if they had been alone. The father's desperation to protect his son at all costs will affect your emotions.While [The Stand] by Stephen King is still my favorite post-apocalyptic novel, [The Road] is an easy second.Highly recommended!