Are you kidding me?December 3, 2008 This must have been a slow year for Pulitzer submissions if this book won the prize. The book is a slow moving rip-off of S.M. Stirling's "Dies The Fire" series (minus the plot, character development, dialog and punctuation).
The "story" (and I use the term loosley) follows an unnamed man and his son down a road. We know nothing about the man or the boy, not even their names. We know that the boy is hungry because he tells the man "I'm hungry" - - we know the man also knows because he tells the boy "I know". And there you have it, the book in a nutshell.
Don't be tempted by the reviews, this book is just bad. Post-Apocalypse books are not new, however since this particular book was marketed to the mainstream reader, it gained notoriety. The genre has so much more to offer, read Swan Song or the Stand or Dies the Fire. Don't read this.
This won the Pulitzer for...what?December 3, 2008 I'm not going to say this book was awful, but seriously, what was the point? It just feels so unfinished and lazy. I was expecting a surprise ending or something, but nope, nothing. Though I wasn't bored while reading it, I can't say I enjoyed the book all that much. Hopefully the movie will be better.
Interesting concept, but lacks backstory to make it feel realDecember 3, 2008 Although I did find this book to be thought provoking, ultimately I think that its shortcomings outweigh the concept. Many others complained that it is depressing, which it is, but that doesn't bother me. I love reading WWII stories and have read almost every survivor account I could get my hands on. When comparing this story to real life collapse of civilization that has happened throughout history it lacks realism and depth. No realistic motives are given to either the "heroes" or the "villains" of this story. They are all one dimensional characters that don't convince me of that this is a likely scenario if society collapses. Take the claim that the "bad guys" all become cannibals. History doesn't really support this. People have been starving in many war torn countries where anarchy rules and yet they don't eat each other. People do many horrible things that defy comprehension when law and order dies, but the picture McCarthy paints just has too many holes to make me care about the characters and their fate or to be believable.
Overwrought and Over-reviewedDecember 1, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was compelled by the genre that this book purported to fall into coupled with the fact that it won the Pulitzer Prize. I because of the later, I wasn't expecting "The Road Warrior" or anything, but what I was expecting was something of worth. That's most definitely not what I got.
The entire narrative left me with a handful of words consistently popping to mind, in no particular order: grey, okay, ash, cart, cold, starving. There are more, but they are equally as dreary.
Much of this "story" is a bleak road picture following a man and a boy south to get warmer after some cataclysm of global proportions wipes out most life. The main problem is that there are inconsistencies in the narrative, and with no plot (which is fine) and with what seems to be a choice not to punctuate properly (some but not all apostrophes and all quotation marks are missing), events such as finding an amazing cache of food in one scene, to be nearly starving again only pages later, then pages after that producing a can of peaches that he and the boy share in the cold. An awful lot of time is spent traveling south and quickly searching houses for supplies, but nearly four days are spent searching a boat, the man wracking his brain for helpful insight of where one might hide food or supplies on such a vessel.
My guess is that this book is intended to be entirely metaphorical. I surmised at one point that the man and the boy as well as some other characters that appear are all meant to be parts of the same psyche; letting cynicism and paranoia die in favor of innocence and hope, even if naive hope is the best that can be arrived at. Perhaps the child represents the future, potential, and the man represents the present, stagnation. There is an "old man" character that pops up seeming to reinforce this hypothesis, perhaps representing the past, acquiescence, and blind acceptance, but then one must wonder why the same number of pages are devoted to description of cannibal slave-driver soldiers that the man and boy hide from. Not only that, but such encounters seem to reinforce the man's reluctance to stop and trust other people to protect the boy. If the story is a metaphor, what is it meant to illustrate?
Moral ambiguity abounds, but it is pointed out as much more serious than one the circumstances dictate. The man kills another, clearly malevolent person, to protect the boy. No pontification, but time is spent with the man trying to rationalize this with the boy. Rationalization is made for taking food from abandoned houses, but not from abandoned supermarkets or from dried and abandoned apple orchards.
Personally, I believe that the boy is not the man's son, but that he has taken the boy as his responsibility following the suicidal death of the man's wife. She gives birth to a son and kills herself after the cataclysm, but tells him that he must face reality - that he could never take care of the baby himself in this horrible world they are faced with. The boy could be his son, but it doesn't need to be, at least not biologically. The drive of the man is to prove this woman, the love of his life that he has lost, wrong. To this end, poor planning on his part, and a deadly condition leaving him with limited time in which to do this, leads to stumbling along "the road" and into dangerous situations and near calamity.
I can only recommend this book to aspiring writers wanting to know what it takes to win the Pulitzer Prize. Clearly, punctuation, plot, character development and consistent narrative aren't necessary, but drawing vague metaphors regarding human nature and the declination of western society are encouraged.
Lame.
The Good and the BadNovember 30, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Its a beautifully written novel and the two main characters are interesting and they do have some unusual encounters in what is essentially a world in ashes. I cant fault the author in his style and the main idea but I found the last 50 pages to be lacking. I couldnt help but feel let down by the ending. That was it? Not to spoil it for anyone else but the author made some odd choices in what he would describe at length, in great detail, and then almost rush past others, in particular the ending. So I give it 5 stars for the writing, 3 for the story and execution, for a 4 star average. Its worth the read.
