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The Road (Oprah's Book Club) | 
 enlarge | Author: Cormac Mccarthy
Publisher: Vintage Books
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $4.58
You Save: $10.37 (69%)
Rating:  1606 reviews
Media: Paperback
Pages: 287
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0307387895
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307387899
ASIN: 0307387895
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Binding tight, clean pages, no writing on text, minor cover wear, average edge wear on glossy cover, lower corner crease, good book.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
Best known for his Border Trilogy, hailed in the San Francisco Chronicle as "an American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century," Cormac McCarthy has written ten rich and often brutal novels, including the bestselling No Country for Old Men, and The Road. Profoundly dark, told in spare, searing prose, The Road is a post-apocalyptic masterpiece, one of the best books we've read this year, but in case you need a second (and expert) opinion, we asked Dennis Lehane, author of equally rich, occasionally bleak and brutal novels, to read it and give us his take. Read his glowing review below. --Daphne Durham
Guest Reviewer: Dennis Lehane
 Dennis Lehane, master of the hard-boiled thriller, generated a cult following with his series about private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, wowed readers with the intense and gut-wrenching Mystic River, blew fans all away with the mind-bending Shutter Island, and switches gears with Coronado, his new collection of gritty short stories (and one play).
Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehane
Product Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER
National Book Critic's Circle Award Finalist
A New York Times Notable Book
One of the Best Books of the Year
The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times, New York, People, Rocky Mountain News, Time, The Village Voice, The Washington Post
The searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-—and each other.
The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Waste of Time November 17, 2008
K. Hawk (Savannah, GA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I just finished reading this book. I feel as though I have wasted 4 hours of my life. I refused to put it down until I finished because I thought there must be a pay-off at the end. I suffered through page after page of the same story. Ash, shopping carts, wrapping up in blankets, rain storm, look for food, hide on the side of the road, go through an abandoned house. Turn and page and repeat. The dialouge between the boy and the man was annoying. "Papa I'm cold". "I know". "Okay". "Okay". "Papa, I'm scared". "I know". "Okay". Luckily, I bought the paperback and only wasted $14 instead of $27!
 Dark with no salvation November 17, 2008
N. Hamlin (Marquette, MI USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Reading is, for me, instructive, uplifting, entertaining, or enlightening. To be dark without any of the other attributes feels like a waste of time. This book wasted my time. I already know how cruel humans can be, and how badly we treat the planet. I kept waiting for the moral to rise out of the ashes, but none did.
 The Road November 16, 2008
Cheryl Sheets (Massena, NY USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This month's book club leader chose it. Something I probably never would have read. That is what makes being in a book club and others choosing each month fun. It was an "interesting" book. I found it very slow at the beginning. As I got into it I could not put it down. I needed to know what was going to happen to the characters. The love between father and son was very strong. I feel the father would have done anything for the son and in a way did. He may have just given up if he did not have his son to protect.
The Road November 16, 2008
Patti1955 (Phoenix, Az.)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is the last time I listen to Oprah regarding any book. This book is dark but meaningless. I had to force myself to finish this pointless tragic story.
How this became a best seller is beyond me.
 Wow. What a great book but - whew - don't expect to be lift up. November 16, 2008
dcw (Texas)
Another outstanding book from Cormac. And out of his normal genre. I really enjoyed the book but it is gonna leave you feeling like you need some sunshine afterwards. Dark book, dark story telling done very well.
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