欧宝娱乐

** spoiler alert ** I have read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction and 鈥淭he Road鈥� by Cormac McCarthy is probably in a tie with 鈥淥n the Beach鈥� by Nevil Shute for the most depressing example of the genre ever written. It was so relentless that I was very surprised by the ending.

As I was reading, I kept hearing Spencer Tracy鈥檚 voice narrating in my head the way he narrated the voice-over in the movie version of 鈥淭he Old Man and the Sea.鈥� In fact, within a couple of pages, I noticed a great similarity between McCormac鈥檚 style in 鈥淭he Road鈥� and Hemingway鈥檚 signature style. If anything, he鈥檚 even sparer than Hemingway. His words and sentences aren鈥檛 just short, the punctuation is even leaner. He doesn鈥檛 use any apostrophes for contractions and he doesn鈥檛 use any quotation marks for dialogue. He doesn鈥檛 even have chapters, just very frequent page breaks. The characters have no names, just 鈥渢he man鈥� and 鈥渢he boy鈥�. Sometimes, they are referred to as father and son. Let me state flat-out that I hate Hemingway. I suffered through a couple of his short stories and 鈥淭he Sun Also Rises鈥� only because I had to as an English lit major. However, I think McCarthy鈥檚 writing in 鈥淭he Road鈥� is effective. It fits the story of a father and son just trying to stay alive on a barren, devastated planet.

I have to admit that I鈥檓 really torn on the ending. I can鈥檛 decide if it鈥檚 a cheat or not. It certainly was a twist and it raised more questions than it answered. I think it would have been more true to the narrative if it had ended differently. It almost seemed as if McCormac ran out of steam and just decided to end it. Despite the possibly flawed ending (and I鈥檓 still not sure it was flawed), I must shamelessly admit that it made me cry.

If you decide to read 鈥淭he Road鈥�, I highly recommend that you have a humorous book on hand to start reading as soon as you finish. You鈥檙e going to need some humor when you鈥檙e done.

I suppose I should also add my reasoning for only giving it three stars. While it does have a lot of critical acclaim and people really like this book, I didn't find it to be particularly creative. I've been down this road before in numerous post-apocalyptic books and films, many of which were done much better. I liked it, but I didn't love it and I definitely wasn't blown away by it.