"The Road" is the desolate tale of a father and child through the aftermath of an unnamed catastrophic event. At first it might sound as just another post apocalyptic tale, but in reality, it's a lot more. It's about the inner states, transitions, the will to go further - and also about trying to cope with the remembrances of a golden past, when surrounded only by desolation.

One of the first things that I've noticed, perhaps also because I'm not a native English speaker, was the language style - to be more precise, the complicated, twisted expressions used throughout the book. It's definitively not the clean, concise English advertised nowadays - but an expressive and emotive version. Yes, I think this plays a major role in how the book "feels" to the reader: it creates a heavy, crushing mood.

The characters are quite few, actually there are only two main ones and some brief secondary roles. The odd thing about the main figures, a father and his child, is the fact that they have no names - perhaps in the new world there are no more identities, just two lost souls trying to stay alive for one more day.

It's also impossible not to be touched by the sensible relation between the father and his son. For him, the child is the only thing worth living for, but for the child, things are a bit different; because he never experienced life before the cataclysm, he doesn't miss anything, nor is he able to dream for a revived past. There is however something which animates him, but we're not told what exactly it is. One thing the child cares for is to remain good (the father also shares this feeling, though it's probably only because of the son). Now, this gets a bit more dramatic, as what does good mean in a world haunted by barbaric road warriors, cannibalism and total degradation? They both find it very hard to relate to good or bad, as there are no more values in the world - yet they use a symbol for this, the symbol of fire - they are good as long as they have the fire.

As for the structure of the book, it's not very well emphasised. I'm quite sure that the book would feel almost the same with some parts taken out, as most of the events are not really related to each other - nor do they contribute to the plot. If you're into complicated plots, then it's probably the wrong book for you. You can guess what is going to happen right after the first pages (or maybe even after reading this review). But I don't think it matters that much, as the value of the book is not in the plot, or in the action - it's in the expressed emotions. And it does a great job at expressing things.

I enjoyed this book a lot and I think it will stay on my mind for a very long time. Cormac McCarthy is really a master at playing with emotions, often I would sit late at night, with a glass of red wine and just enjoy the carnival of emotions created by his words.

As always, you can find below a few quotes which I liked.

"You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget."

"All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy, I have you."

"They sat at the window and ate in their robes by candlelight a midnight supper and watched distant cities burn."

"Rich dreams now which he was loathe to wake from. Things no longer known in the world. The cold drove him forth to mend the fire. Memory of her crossing the lawn toward the house in the early morning in a thin rose gown that clung to her breasts. He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the word and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not."

"What if I said that he's a god? The old man shook his head. I'm past all that now. Have been for years. Where men cant live gods fare no better."

"Maybe you should always be on the lookout. If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it."

"Maybe he understood for the first time that to the boy he was himself an alien. A being from a planet that no longer existed. The tales of which were suspect. He could not construct for the child’s pleasure the world he’d lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child has known this better than he."

"He tried to remember the dream but he could not. All that was left was the feeling of it. He thought perhaps they’d come to warn him. Of what? That he could enkindle in the heart of the child what was ashes in his own. Even now some part of him wished they’d never found this refuge. Some part of him always wished it to be over."

"People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn’t believe in that. Tomorrow wasnt getting ready for them. It didnt even know they were there."

"When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up. Do you understand? And you cant give up. I wont let you."

"Do you think that your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledgerbook? Against what? There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground."

"Perhaps in the world’s destruction it would be possible at last to see how it was made. Oceans, mountains. The ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be. The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular. The silence."

"Do you remember that little boy, Papa?
Yes. I remember him.
Do you think that he’s all right that little boy?
Oh yes. I think he’s all right.
Do you think he was lost?
No. I dont think he was lost.
I’m scared that he was lost.
I think he’s all right.
But who will find him if he’s lost? Who will find the little boy?
Goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again."

"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not to be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."

"There is no God and we are his prophets."