THE ROAD

TITLE: THE ROAD
AUTHOR: CORMAC MCCARTHY
Pages: 307
Date: 21/10/2007
Grade: 5
Library

This should have been a really depressing book, and on more than one occasion I thought about not finishing it. But in the end not finishing the book would have been harder than reading on was.
It is the story of a man and his young son, taking place at a time when the world has been all but destroyed through some, unidentified, disaster. In a world where both the sun and the moon are obscured by ash, they need to travel south in order to survive the winter.
But the road is not a safe place. Most of the people still alive have left all human values behind them in order to survive. Food and clean water are next to impossible to find, but for the man and his son cannibalism is not an option, even if it is just that for others.
With the man coughing up blood from the start of the story, a happy ending is never likely. The question is more, how bad will the ending be?
What saddened me both was that the boy was boron after the disaster happened and never knew the world his father could at least remember.