The Road

I don't get much time for pleasure reading.  So when I picked up The Road by Comac McCarthy from the library on Monday I figured it may take me three weeks to finish, but at least I'd have something new to read.  I was very wrong!  Talk about a book I haven't been able to put down.  In a combined three reading sessions I have read over 140 pages (which usually only happens during the days of summer reading)!  The book has no chapters, and I think that's why I read for so long.  Instead of "just one more chapter" it was "just one more page" times 100.  The book is about a father and his son who are navigating a dark (both physically & spiritually) world after what one can only assume as a nuclear holocaust of sorts.  Ash everywhere.  Few people.  Good guys versus bad guys.  It's choppy, and bounces around between scenes in time.  There are many times it jumps back to scenes from before the catastrophe that wiped out the earth.  If you have seen The Book of Eli with Denzel Washington, the condition of the world they walk through is similar, however McCarthy's world is darker, with little sun and constant ash falling (even on the snow).  These types of stories are called "post-apocalyptic" which is interesting to me because right now I'm studying the book of Revelation and I don't see how people can survive the last seven bowls of God's wrath.  But that's another post all in itself.  I haven't finished the book yet, so I don't know if I recommend it but so far it's a good read.  Depressing, but good.  It's forced me to reflect on the human spirit.  What motivates us, drives us forward in life.  For this father, it is his love for his son.  To protect him from harm.  There is a part in the book when they are being chased and he hides the boy, gives him a pistol with one shot left in it and tells him if they find him he knows what to do, put it in his mouth, point up, and pull the trigger hard.  The father's fear of the thought of his boy being tortured, eaten or worse drives him to make this kind of decision.  The whole book isn't that morbid, but it has its moments.  Which I guess only makes sense for the world they live in.