Cormac McCarthy's The Road is compelling and transforming. His work may be what Norman Mailer had in mind when he said, "The purpose of a great novel, however, is not to cater to one’s passing needs, but to enter one’s life; even alter it" (at the National Book Awards in 2005; although The Road wasn't published until 2006, so maybe Mailer was thinking of All the Pretty Horses). I continue to wrestle with this prolonged meditation on the requirements of fatherhood.
I should say as well that the book ends, remarkably enough, on a note of hope. But to get there, you have to slog through page after page of unrelenting, unremitting horror, with more scenes than I can count which you will wish you had never read so that those images wouldn't be seared into your head. I'm glad I did, but I can't recommend you do.
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