The Road: The Bummer Side of Post-Apocalyptic America

Cormac McCarthy makes his bid for the biggest buzzkill of the english language. Something horrible has happened to the earth and as far as the two protagonists in the story are concerned, there is no sanctuary. A son and his consumptive father make their way to the coast in an effort to escape the cold winter, fighting almost constant starvation and hiding from roving bands of rapist\cannibals (or is that cannibal rapists?). There is no hope and and they both see death as slow creeping certitude. There are a handful of extraordinarily horrible moments, and another handful of heartbreaking tenderness brought to you by the good people at Coca-Cola and Honest Jim's Bomb Shelter superstore.

One of the sparse moments in the book that feature other characters has the father explaining to a shriveled old man to whom they just fed some of their precious stores that his boy is something special. He fights despair even whilst coughing blood like it was going out of style because his boy would give a spiteful dying bastard some food that meant an extra day of starvation less than a week later. Mr. McCarthy paints the power of devotion between father and son in even the most bleak, and I mean bleak, circumstances. Their proposed idealism, "carrying the fire" as the boy calls it, is chipped away by compromises that tear schism after schism between the two that are healed over with sad sparse conversations. The broken father who will kill and loves his boy all the more because he won't punched me right in the gut and if you've got a dad or a son you might feel the same way.

This book was one serious trip and enough folks have said as much. The cultural landscape is armpit deep in apocalypse porn, from Mad Max to Waterworld to Mother Abigail's corn bread. Always it seems surviving the big one is a sexy sexy time filled with repopulating duties, free Cadillacs and the subtle perks that come with being amongst the chosen. Maybe the nuts who pine for the end times as a chance to shake things up had better read about the bag of shit the world might turn into and start sorting their fucking plastics properly. The book is pretty overwhelming, short and sad. Read it yourself and see.