A father and son travel to the coast in a desperate attempt at survival. They are plagued by marauders, exposure, hunger and their own demonic thoughts. In a post-apocalyptic America are there any good guys? McCarthy's third person narrative is void of much punctuation and rich in allusion of parental love, sacrifice and saving grace. The conversation between the boy and man is limited as the man's memory fades of life before the apocalypse. The boy knows nothing of a world with blue sky, plants, animals and birds. The absence of nature leads to the absence of humanity; save for the love between a father and son. I cried, I rejoiced, and loved this book. This is a true American masterpiece.
Review from Booklist 2006
A man and a boy, father and son, each the others world entire, walk a road in the ashes of the late world. In this stunning departure from his previous work, McCarthy (No Country for Old Men, 2005) envisions a postapocalyptic scenario. Cities have been destroyed, plants and animals have died, and few humans survive. The sun is hidden by ash, and it is winter. With every scrap of food looted, many of the living have turned to cannibalism. The man and the boy plod toward the sea. The man remembers the world before; as his memories die, so, too dies that world. The boy was born after everything changed. The man, dying, has a fierce paternal love and will to survive--yet he saves his last two bullets for himself and his son. Although the holocaust is never explained, this is the kind of grim warning that leads to nightmares. Its spare, precise language is rich with other explorations, too: hope in the face of hopelessness, the ephemeral nature of our existence, the vanishing worlds we all carry within us. McCarthy evokes Beckett, using repetition and negation to crushing effect, showing us by their absence the things we will miss. Hypnotic and haunting, relentlessly dark, this is a novel to read in late-night solitude. Though the focus never leaves the two travelers, they carry our humanity, and we can't help but feel the world hangs in the balance of their hopeless quest. A masterpiece. -- Keir Graff (Reviewed 08-01-2006) (Booklist, vol 102, number 22, p9)
