The Road
FictionDystopiaAdventurepost-apocalyptic fictionextinction event
3.9
Open LibraryFirst lines
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him.
About this book
Cormac McCarthy's tenth novel, The Road, is his most harrowing yet deeply personal work. Some unnamed catastrophe has scourged the world to a burnt-out cinder, inhabited by the last remnants of mankind and a very few surviving dogs and fungi. The sky is perpetually shrouded by dust and toxic particulates; the seasons are merely varied intensities of cold and dampness. Bands of cannibals roam the roads and inhabit what few dwellings remain intact in the woods. Through this nightmarish residue of America a haggard father and his young son attempt to flee the oncoming Appalachian winter and head towards the southern coast along carefully chosen back roads. Mummified corpses are their only benign companions, sitting in doorways and automobiles, variously impaled or displayed on pikes and tables and in cake bells, or they rise in frozen poses of horror and agony out of congealed asphalt. The boy and his father hope to avoid the marauders, reach a milder climate, and perhaps locate some remnants of civilization still worthy of that name. They possess only what they can scavenge to eat, and the rags they wear and the heat of their own bodies are all the shelter they have. A pistol with only a few bullets is their only defense besides flight. Before them the father pushes a shopping cart filled with blankets, cans of food and a few other assets, like jars of lamp oil or gasoline siphoned from the tanks of abandoned vehicles—the cart is equipped with a bicycle mirror so that they will not be surprised from behind. Through encounters with other survivors brutal, desperate or pa…
Themes & subjects
FictionDystopiaAdventurepost-apocalyptic fictionextinction eventOpen Library Staff Picks
Characters & people
Setting
United Statesthe SouthAppalachia
About the author
Cormac McCarthy
20 July 1933 – 13 June 2023
Cormac McCarthy (born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr.) is an American writer who has written twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories, spanning the Western and postapocalyptic genres. He is known for his graphic depictions of violence and his unique writing style, recognizable by a sparse use of punctuation and attribution. McCarthy is widely regarded as one of the greatest contemporary American writers.
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