The Road - Cormac McCarthy

"When the flood calls
You have no home, you have no walls
In the thunder crash
You're a thousand minds, within a flash
Don't be afraid to cry at what you see

The actors gone, there's only you and me
And if we break before the dawn, they'll
use up what we used to be."
                        ( "Here Comes the Flood" - Peter Gabriel )

      A father and son, head towards the Coast in a burnt out, ash covered, desolate America. Surviving each day is a challenge and achievement. Food is so scarce, in a barren land that cannibalism is the norm by the roaming gangs, from whom the father has to protect his son, and himself - his son's only source of security. The cause for the literally apocalyptic disaster is not mentioned, but the reader needn't worry about the past - his hands are full, with the father and son, in their battle to save themselves from the rain, the freezing cold, the cannibalistic gangs and starvation. Haggard, Dirty, Sick and Depressed, the father has no option but to be precise with his mental faculties, each minute. He would rather shoot his son, than let the gangs get him - so much so, he teaches his son how to shoot himself. A painless death is always preferred to suffering - the relative options, even luxuries that a desolate America offers its survivors. Their was once a woman. His woman; the boy's mother. She leaves them unable to handle the inevitable, electing to suffer by herself, rather than see what befalls her family.

"No, I'm speaking the truth. Sooner or later they will catch us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They'll rape him. They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you wont face it. You'd rather wait for this to happen. But I cant. I cant . . .. We used to talk about death, she said. We dont anymore. Why is that?

I dont know.

It's because it's here. There's nothing left to talk about." ( Page 56 )



This novel is about survival. About  invoking hope out of nothing, when it is even prudent to die by your own hands, fast and with minimum pain. Yet life is all we have, and the love for life, especially that of your child, against whom your own meters down to a relative insignificance. The author has conveyed these sentiments in the most driest, harrowing way possible. The author's overall dry narration style, with the emotions presented in glimpses suitable for a movie rather than a novel - with details on burned up cottages, barns, basements, trees work on the reader to visualise and live through this land of hopelessness. It is exactly that which the author has tried. He has not attempted to show the beginning of the disaster, or leave much hope by the closure. His attempt appear to be make the reader a silent, invisible third person, party to the battling father and son. "Live through this", he appears to be saying.  The author's narration style reminded me the minimalist style of Coetzee and Hemingway - more the former, because of the bleakness of hope each page grows on the former. When the father and son has an occasional windfall - which is discovering some food in a basement missed by the roaming gangs - the reader feels that he or she too, takes a dip into the precious can of peaches.

Yet some of the form that the author uses, needs a little getting used to - and I might need up to his second book for that. "Can't" and "Don't" for McCartney is just "cant" and "dont". Dialogues are part of the flow with no quotes. Attention to finer detail in replacing a wheel of the cart, is more emphasised than the words spent on capturing the mindset of the father or the boy. These aren't misses, but intended nuances of style which define the work of the author, who for all the straight forwardness in narration, needs a little getting used to. But the author painted so vivid a picture in my mind, that I knew that I just have to watch the movie based on this book.