The Road - Cormac McCarthy (unfinished)

Published by Picador/Pan Macmillan Ltd: London, 2007.
First published 2006.

I feel a bit bad leaving this one unfinished, because it is a very well-written book. I pushed on with it for almost half of the book's length.

But... I just can't...

It's so bleak.

I need hope in what I read. I cannot handle the level of bleakness of something like this. It is one of the reasons I don't enjoy zombie fiction either - there is no hope in those worlds, just an ongoing spectre of death hanging over everything.

A father and son make their way through a post-apocalyptic world. Everything is dead. Society is fallen. The few remaining humans have mostly turned to cannibalism. The father and son have a gun with two bullets left. They are making their way south, hoping for somewhere safe.

It's heavy. It's disturbing. And now that I am a father with a young son, I feel this book - the weight of its emotions. And, I just can't...

...I can't imagine such a world...

I totally get why this won the Pulitzer Prize. It's well done.

But... its not for me.

Ugh.

(Pulitzer Winning Fiction)

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