The Road

Starred review from July 24, 2006
Violence, in McCarthy's postapocalyptic tour de force, has been visited worldwide in the form of a "long shear of light and then a series of low concussions" that leaves cities and forests burned, birds and fish dead and the earth shrouded in gray clouds of ash. In this landscape, an unnamed man and his young son journey down a road to get to the sea. (The man's wife, who gave birth to the boy after calamity struck, has killed herself.) They carry blankets and scavenged food in a shopping cart, and the man is armed with a revolver loaded with his last two bullets. Beyond the ever-present possibility of starvation lies the threat of roving bands of cannibalistic thugs. The man assures the boy that the two of them are "good guys," but from the way his father treats other stray survivors the boy sees that his father has turned into an amoral survivalist, tenuously attached to the morality of the past by his fierce love for his son. McCarthy establishes himself here as the closest thing in American literature to an Old Testament prophet, trolling the blackest registers of human emotion to create a haunting and grim novel about civilization's slow death after the power goes out. 250,000 announced first printing; BOMC main selection.

December 4, 2006
McCarthy's latest novel, a frightening apocalyptic vision, is narrated by a nameless man, one of the few survivors of an unspecified civilization-ending catastrophe. He and his young son are trekking along a treacherous highway, starving and freezing, trying to avoid roving cannibal armies. The tale, and their lives, are saved from teetering over the edge of bleakness thanks to the man's fierce belief that they are "the good guys" who are preserving the light of humanity. In this stark, effective production, Stechschulte gives the father an appropriately harsh, weary voice that sways little from its numbed register except to urge on the weakening boy or soothe his fears after an encounter with barbarians. When they uncover some vestige of the former world, the man recalls its vanished wonder with an aching nostalgia that makes the listener's heart swell. Stechschulte portrays the son with a mournful, slightly breathy tone that emphasizes the child's whininess, making him much less sympathetic than his resourceful father. With no music or effects interrupting Stechschulte's carefully measured pace and gruff, straightforward delivery, McCarthy's darkly poetic prose comes alive in a way that will transfix listeners. Simultaneous release with the Knopf hardcover (Reviews, July 24).

September 16, 2024
French cartoonist Larcenet (Ordinary Victories) captures the darkness and harsh beauty of McCarthy’s novel in this elegiac adaptation. As in the original, an unnamed man and his son travel through a chilly postapocalyptic world where society and life itself seem to be disintegrating. They scavenge for supplies they can carry in an old shopping cart and avoid other people as much as possible, as their road is littered with marauders, cannibals, and thieves. “Are we still the good guys?” the boy repeatedly asks, but as the father’s desperation deepens, he finds it harder to answer in the affirmative. Larcenet’s tactile inks, gently tinted in sepia tones, lend the tale the feel of old photographs or woodcuts. He strips the dialogue down to the bare bones and tells the story through images: vast decayed landscapes, close-ups on weathered faces, and lingering shots of roadside corpses and now-meaningless billboard ads and product packaging. The back matter includes Larcenet’s letter asking McCarthy for permission to adapt the novel, where he promises that he has “no other ambitions but to draw your words.” His work bears this out, flawlessly evoking the tone of the original. It’s a worthy companion to McCarthy’s chilling classic.