Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Well, it's not often you can call a Cormac McCarthy book "sweet." It's also not often you're tempted to call a post-apocalyptic novel filled with rapist cannibals "sweet." Yet, The Road is surprisingly hopeful (on a Cormac McCarthy scale), presenting a world filled with the same unfathomable darkness and mystery that characterizes most of McCarthy's work, yet showing two people who struggle on regardless of that darkness: a father and his son, who "carry the flame."

We never learn why nearly everything is dead. As is often the case with McCarthy's work, he leaves out the details that aren't essential. What we do know is that a man survived a huge event that killed nearly everything, and he has a young son. The son was born after the event happened, and only knows what he's heard from his father about the world before. With a map that is so old that it's a bunch of numbered pieces, they trace their path to the coast. They travel toward the coast for the sake of having some destination, although they don't know what they'll find there.

As always, McCarthy's writing is evocative, sparse and with the customary lack of punctuation. He could write books with no plot and just description and they'd still be worth reading. But the relationship between the father and his son is what makes The Road such a terrific book. The dialogue between them is just so fraggin good. McCarthy doesn't need to tell you anything about their relationship, about their feelings, about their struggles: it all comes through naturally in their conversation. It's all so believable, so natural, and often so hilarious.

The father is struggling to survive, but he's more concerned about keeping his son alive. The son is often angered by the fact that they can't save everyone they come across. The father often makes small concessions to the son, but when they come across a starving old man, he refuses to do more than give him a meal and let him stay with them for one night. He remains a realist about their very limited resources and their ability to truly trust others.

The biggest threats are starvation and dehydration, but they also have to watch out for the organized groups of cannibals who roam the road. It seems that more humans survived the apocalypse than any other kind of animal, or else the humans were able to survive the aftermath better. Either way, many people have turned to cannibalism, since it is the most readily available type of food. This makes some of the meetings with other people out on the road quite scary, since our main characters don't know what to expect from any chance encounters.

So, why is it five stars? I don't often give books a full five, but I feel The Road deserves it because of a combination of factors. 1: The characters are full and rich and believable and I loved them. 2: This is the strongest depiction of a post-apocalyptic world that I've encountered in fiction or in film. You never need to suspend your disbelief; everything feels too real for the fantasy to be even slightly fractured. 3: The book is concise, taking less than 300 pages to tell its complete story (which has a surprisingly strong ending considering the bleakness of the world). And, 4: looking back, I can't find anything at all to fault. I recommend this one to any and everyone.