The Road, book review. (Cormac McCarthy)

Okay, so this is an interesting book, it's interesting because it breaks the rule; it's also frustrating for that very same reason.

The book is about a man and a young boy making their way south, along, The Road. There isn't much to see and very little to do, other than hide from any would-be criminals and scavenge for food and water.

The book paints a very bleak future of a world that has been ravaged by . . .? Well, we don't know, it's just ravaged, and our two main characters, er! lets just call them, the man and the boy, because that's what they're called in the book, have their entire life in a shopping cart.
As they move ever closer to the sea, they have to hide, fight, run, lose all their possessions, get them back again and more.

The sense of isolation here, of hopelessness, is akin to John Wyndham's, The Day of the Triffids, and really punches through. The suspense: when they see or hear other humans, enter what they hope are unoccupied buildings, descend into cellars, where the man finds fresh clean drinking water, all have you biting your nails in anticipation, but, and this is where I feel the book lets itself down, it's all a bit too bland.

The world is grey, covered in ash, the sun never penetrates and the nights are cold, very cold, (it's because of the cold that the man and boy are heading south), but it's bland to the point of annoyance.

Back to my opening statement: this book breaks too many rules, well, it does in my opinion.

Books are supposed to have a beginning middle and an end, this one only has an end; the whole thing feels like the last few hundred pages of a much longer manuscript.

Not naming the characters, okay, fine, but without that, they lose some of their humanity, their identity, and you sort of stop routing for them, and my biggest gripe? No speech marks! Why? Why, why, why, do authors and/or publishers think this is okay? It's not clever, it's just bloody annoying.

So, in summary, it's a book about a world we don't know, with people we don't know, or get to know, travelling south to a place we don't know, with no speech marks.

For the sense of isolation and the tension created when the man goes into the cellar and confronts a would be attacker, and the fact that it is short and doesn't take long to read, I’ll give this one three stars.