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Just finished the Road

R

RickJ

Joined
Mar 2, 2003
Messages
3,381
With all the talk about the book and movie, I found the book at our base Shoppette so I picked it up, as a Father of two Boys I will tell you it tore my Heart out. Just a few of my thoughts, The Father was a great Father and leader, I think everyone should read this book and realize yes it is a book but what if that happened to me and my world. I wanted him to find a weapon and at least a few rounds, walking around with that one bullet was sad along with all the other sad things.

Yes this is just a book but you can get some Survival thinking going on just from the situations in it. I just hope and pray that we never have to live through something like that in our lives or my Childrens lives. I hope never!

RickJ
 
I've seen the book out in the stores here around the house & started to purchase it but backed out ....I also would like to see the movie !
 
One of the best and most depressing books I've ever read. You keep thinking...ok that was bad they have to start getting better luck now...but they almost never do.

I plan on seeing the movie this weekend. If it stays true to the book it has Oscar and Academy award all over it.
 
Interesting I found it heart rending but did not like it - or consider it a good book. I can understadn the situation of father and son (having a young boy myself) but found the plot devices more extreme than a james bond movie. I did not find the groupings of people believable. Sure they were metaphors for different responses of people under stress - loners, insanity, predators .... but they lacked credibility for the environment (to me).

it is one of the few books that I hope does become hollywoodised in the making.

I hope others enjoyed it more than I
 
I didn't like the book. Read most of it in one night wanting it to get better.
Finished next day and it still wasn't good. Waste of $10.95
I'll wait for the movie dvd to hit $5 bin at Walmart or rent it.
Several people have asked if something was wrong with boy. Not too bright??
BTW, one of my grandsons has autism, hate to think what it would be like to drag him down such a "road".
 
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Loved it. Very, very believable. I have travelled with many odd folks and spent a lot of time on the road by foot and vehicle. As soon as you think people won't act in any fashion, they'll prove you wrong. Again, fantastic read.
 
i read the book last week, first time i read a book in one day in a long time. Just couldn't put it down. Hopefully i won't be to dissapointed be the moive.
great story, and with some imagination quite believable of a scenario.
 
for those that didn't like it, why didn't you?
And Davyd, what did you find unrealistic about the groupings of people? I thought it was very believable, look at how people react in a catastrophe, look at Katrina. Now add that everything is gone and what are those people going to do?

I think this may be one of the best I've ever read, the odd punctiation and no chapters kinda threw me off, but what a story!
It really felt..bleak, gave a look into how it would be, just living to live to the next day.
I don't think the boy was slow, I think he was just incredibly resigned due to his enviornment, and I got that he was very young.

The part where they find the stash, I just about jumped for joy when I read it!

Definately made me re think a few things
 
i thought it was very solid book. Me personally i would have liked a little more back drop as to what happened to make the world that way but it was a solid little story. The only thing that annoyed me was i would have had to stay w/ the under ground spot with all the supplies for a little longer but either way it was solid and i hope the movie is just as good
 
I liked the book very much despite its depressing story with just the odd ray of hope. Personally I think the quote about the trouts at the end is about live still pulsing and not the opposite that some things cannot be undone. Wasn't too sure when I read it. Suffice to say that despite some short comings (biology 101) it was a very good book.

If you like Cormac then try No Country For Old Men (the movie was very faithful to the book by the way). I'm working on the border trilogy right now. I cannot recommend Blood Meridian though, found it boring and violent, despite the fact that the truth was probably worse.
 
gruntinhusbaya

I felt the physical envionment was just a weak set up to explore the father child issues and explore about how different parts of the human psyche work in adverstity, largely by taking one elelmetn at a time and highlighting it for the father/son to respond to with their contemperary (unchanged) values. And to me that was a little too transparent compared to other books - i.e The Book Thief which explored responses in adversity in a way I found superb - and with a creative element - death as a compassionate narrator. To my taste a much better book

I think some one of the fathers skills would have been better equipped physically and mentally after 5 years.

But the groups they encountered might all be sound, but not in the same envionment and not after that time,

The scavanger thief unethical loner - fine - to bring out the issue of forgiveness

The blind mad old man - can't see how would have survived crippled in that environment where so many others didn't - nature is harsh. his role was to test compassion - did they give some of their limited supplies when it served no useful purpose

The group on the truck - a tribe reverted to, or beyond savagery, with sexual slavery and possibly walking food (?). If they were that far gone I can't see that many female slaves being kept for sex and domsetic duties. Just did not ring true as a stable unit after 5 years or more. Those sort of environements do occur in mutinies and shipwrecks aka Batavia wreck but not for that duration or with survival resoruces so limited.

The small group cannibals on the road - again did not ring true. If there was the compassion to protect, feed and nutrture a preganant woman - I can't see them eating the child. On the other hand if they were prepared to eat the child - they would have eaten the woman earlier. - the message here is to challenge the most basic drive protection of children and basic humanity

The static cannibals - with people in the basement half eaten. It is not logical to keep people alive an injured - if you want them as food stick them in the deep freeze and their energy is preserved intact till you want it.

Those are my issues - i stand to have people with differing views
 
This is a book about the love of a father, plain and simple. If you remove all other things - besides relationship, what would you do?

TF
 
Having a young kid myself, and having come from a family without a mother, the book was heartbreaking for me to read. Having to keep a child alive in that kind of environment? And the outlook just kept getting more and more bleak as the story went along. The ending was positively gut wrenching for a father to read.

I'd read a little bit every night before going to sleep. That was a very depressing couple of weeks.
 
I didn't want the story to end. I wasn't surprised by the ending. Hints were given all the way through the book. But... I had read just about all of Johnstone's "Ashes" series, and it became very repetitious. Still with "The Road", I was left wondering "... and then?"

I couldn't help thinking of things I would have done differently than the Dad did as I read the book, but that is true with most stories I read and I take it as a good sign that the author has managed to get me to place myself in the position of a charactor in his story.

I also liked that the author didn't mire us down in the details of what event happened to bring about the state of affairs. Rather than spend time considering the plausability of the events, we were simply left to accept that this was the way things were.

The writing style took a bit to get used to, mostly because it isn't one I am used to. But I considered it a good read. I'll be sending out my copy to another forumite today. Hopefully he will enjoy it as much as I did.
 
The whole book seemed to be a biblical allegory: the father, who wanted to punish the thief in the Old Testament "eye for an eye" fashion, and the New Testament son who preached forgiveness. The only named character in the whole book is "Ely", probably short for Elijah.

The last line of the Old Testament says (paraphrasing from memory): "Behold, and I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and terrible day of the Lord, and he will set children right in the hearts of their fathers, and fathers right in the hearts of their children, lest I smite the land with a terrible curse." That one line pretty much sums up the whole book.

The title of the book is "The Road." Why put so much emphasis on the Road itself? Probably because the Road is supposed to be the path of righteousness, and staying on that path is fraught with peril and temptations.

I was very disappointed when Oprah interviewed Cormac McCarthy and never even asked him about symbolism in the book.

In any event, this book is proof that plain prose can be an elevated art form. McCarthy stripped out anything that wasn't necessary, including quotation marks and even apostrophes in some cases. That's why it is such a fast read, yet contains so much.
 
I read it last week, and I've got to say that I liked it. As someone who reads for entertainment, I didn't find this book 'pleasant' to read. I'm not really a fan of the author (I flat couldn't read 'No Country')- I don't really care for his writing style, and I didn't like the plot (very Hemingway-esque). However, I did feel a compulsion to finish the book once I got into it, and not many books do that for me:D So yeah, I think it's worth picking up:thumbup:
 
Just read it for the second time last week. I have to say that "The Road" is one of the best books I have read in a long time.

I'll agree with Walt that it was not "pleasant" to read, but as a young father I think it was something that I needed to read. Despite everything that happened, the father's love for the boy and the boy's inherit "goodness" seemed to transcend the horrible world they existed in.

I thought that the ending was great. I'd wondered all along why the father and son didn't have better clothes and shelter. It wouldn't seem like that much of a stretch for them to find warm, weather proof clothing and sleeping bags.

When the stranger meets the boy in the end I think he was wondering the same thing. He was wearing a ski parka, asked about their sleeping bags, and had reloaded his own shotgun shells.

I think that if McCarthy had written the father as the type of survivalist that we see in the ending he wouldn't have been able to explore the levels of despiration and hopelessness that the man and the boy endure.

Loved this book!:thumbup:

Brandon
 
Was an excellent book, haven't seen the movie yet. Dad had balls definately. The only thing I would have liked was some background on exactly what the "Disaster" was. The book opens years into some apocaliptic aftermath and stays there. Was a very good story though
 
I thought it was OK -- not the best, not the worst I've read recently. I enjoyed "One Second After" much more, since it goes into more depth about what went wrong and more strategically thinks through how to survive (yes, I realize that the settings are different).

- Mark
 
Two reasons why I liked having no background. You have to focus on the relationship and its context, and not on what happened to bring them to this point. Second, we all wonder about the what ifs, what if this happens or that happens. The problem remains, its not what happens, but what you do afterward that defines you. Asking the why instead of setting about with what needs to be done at a time like this, there would be no relationship, no story, no Road upon which to travel as it were.
 
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