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becca_osborn 's review for:
The Road
by Cormac McCarthy
At first, the sentence fragments drove me crazy.
Then I was halfway through the book.
The only thing I knew about this book was that it was dystopian and it won a pulitzer. The symbolism is subtle but stark when you realize it. The scenes are repetitive yet not, and McCarthy's language is incredible--I love his combination of weird words for obscure images. And at the end, I still have so many questions, which (IMHO) is evidence of excellent writing.
SPOILERS (mostly notes for myself):
-The way McCarthy handles Cannibalism is excellent. It's subtle, (I think, anyway), and you keep asking yourself "Is he really going there?" And it climaxes into the horrible (but short) scene of the abandoned spit over the fire. Such simple language gives way to quite possibly one of the most terrifying scenes in the book (Besides the basement. Dear goodness, that basement).
-I felt the environmentalist undertones were subtle, and fantastically so. I could get lost in the story without being bombarded with "save our planet" (a message we desperately need to hear, but sometimes can feel a little shout-y). McCarthy had an incredible balance here.
-The symbolism in colours (gray, white, and black), the road itself, were the ones that I felt when I figured them out seemed so obvious, but they weren't too overplayed (maybe the black, but that makes sense).
-I love open-ended endings. That's all I'll say.
-Unnamed characters was the way to go--I found myself strangely unattached to them, yet I wanted to know what happened to them. While I was surprised at how I felt at the man's death, I realized how angry I was that I didn't know his name. His handling of this scene was beautiful. McCarthy understands death.
-The beach scene flashback was where I first cried.
-No quotations: Still not sure why he did this, but it worked, and he made it work really well. It was surprisingly not confusing--maybe in 1-2 places, but it became powerful when the role reversal came in when the Man was about to die.
I don't usually need to sit with books for long, (I tend to process as I go) but I need to sit with this one for awhile. Excellent read. Well-deserving of a Pulitzer (pretty sure it won one?).
Pairings: A Clockwork Orange; The Giver.
Then I was halfway through the book.
The only thing I knew about this book was that it was dystopian and it won a pulitzer. The symbolism is subtle but stark when you realize it. The scenes are repetitive yet not, and McCarthy's language is incredible--I love his combination of weird words for obscure images. And at the end, I still have so many questions, which (IMHO) is evidence of excellent writing.
SPOILERS (mostly notes for myself):
-The way McCarthy handles Cannibalism is excellent. It's subtle, (I think, anyway), and you keep asking yourself "Is he really going there?" And it climaxes into the horrible (but short) scene of the abandoned spit over the fire. Such simple language gives way to quite possibly one of the most terrifying scenes in the book (Besides the basement. Dear goodness, that basement).
-I felt the environmentalist undertones were subtle, and fantastically so. I could get lost in the story without being bombarded with "save our planet" (a message we desperately need to hear, but sometimes can feel a little shout-y). McCarthy had an incredible balance here.
-The symbolism in colours (gray, white, and black), the road itself, were the ones that I felt when I figured them out seemed so obvious, but they weren't too overplayed (maybe the black, but that makes sense).
-I love open-ended endings. That's all I'll say.
-Unnamed characters was the way to go--I found myself strangely unattached to them, yet I wanted to know what happened to them. While I was surprised at how I felt at the man's death, I realized how angry I was that I didn't know his name. His handling of this scene was beautiful. McCarthy understands death.
-The beach scene flashback was where I first cried.
-No quotations: Still not sure why he did this, but it worked, and he made it work really well. It was surprisingly not confusing--maybe in 1-2 places, but it became powerful when the role reversal came in when the Man was about to die.
I don't usually need to sit with books for long, (I tend to process as I go) but I need to sit with this one for awhile. Excellent read. Well-deserving of a Pulitzer (pretty sure it won one?).
Pairings: A Clockwork Orange; The Giver.