Review by Amanda Hampson

The Road with its post-apocalyptic setting and nameless characters is one of those recommended books you resist reading because it sounds so bleak. Set in future America now destroyed beyond all recognition, the story follows a man and his son as they walk south in search of something – anything. The landscape is devoid of plant life, every building has been looted, the few people left on earth are wild and dangerous, ready to kill and eat their fellow survivors.

Strong and resourceful, the man is desperate but determined they should both survive. Treating his son with tenderness and understanding, he guides and protects the boy, teaching him to act with both caution and calculated risk. At times his love is reverential towards the boy as representative of the next generation saying of him: ‘If he is not the word of God, then God never spoke.’ 

McCarthy’s unique writing style relies on precision and specificity. He doesn’t reach for his dictionary of synonyms, he doesn’t do adjectives - his nouns are simply the correct nouns. In paring every description to the essentials he achieves a miraculous reversal of the Law of Diminishing Return. He quenches thirst with the word ‘water’ and provides a banquet with ‘a can of pears’ simply because we know what such an item will mean to the man and boy. 

While The Road is grim, set in a world that is endlessly grey, it’s essentially a story about love and faith and the power of hope that will have you in a thrall to the very last word.

Amanda Hampson is the author of The Olive Sisters and Two for the Road and also runs fiction and memoir writing workshops:www.thewriteworkshops.com.