The Road by Cormac McCarthy (3/5 Stars)

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The Road
Cormac McCarthy

In a post-apocalyptic world, the only thing left in a man and his son's life is the road. They travel down it with a shopping cart, going south for the winter. They don't know what they're looking for, they have no idea what's out there. The worst part? The man won't last much longer.


First off, this book has no quotation marks around the dialouge. It was definitely something to get used too, although I don't think it distracted from the story once I was used to it. Also there are no chapters, making it confusing if you're trying to read it for and English class like  I was. This isn't like a normal post-apocalyptic novel either. There's nothing in this world, and no realistic hope for the man or his son to survive, making it one of the most depressing books I've ever read. The ending was also unrealistic, but you'll see what I mean if you read this book.

This book's greatest strength are the depth of the characters. Although there are only two main characters, they both have a lot of emotion and mystery behind them, which really make you think about what might have happened to them and what might happen to them in the future. The greatest weakness of this book is it's insightfulness, just because I don't think it has much. The book to me is depressing just for the sake of making people sad, and it doesn't really have much moral or lesson to it.

Writing- 5
Pace - 5
Plot Development- 5
Characters - 8
Enjoyability - 5
Insightfulness - 3
Ease of Reading- 8

Overall, I gave this book 3 stars, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone to read. Thanks for reading another one of my reviews, stay tuned for my next review of I, Robot by Issac Asimov! Happy Holidays!