book - The Road

I just finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The story was fragile, terrifying and relentlessly bleak, and I haven't read a book that good in years*.

To be clear, The Road depressed the hell out of me. But in a way only beautiful art can. It never tried to pull at your heartstrings or put a smile on your face. The story was sad and hopeful and bleak naturally, in the same way McCarthy's No Country For Old Men was desperate and odd and funny.

Maybe I've been reading too much nonfiction lately, but the clean, minimalist style of this novel felt like a breath of fresh air to me. It read like poetry.

Incidentally, it's being made into a movie starring Viggo Mortensen, which means anyone who read the book first will sit in the theater with expectations set dangerously high. Right where they should be.

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*Maybe since Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris.