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Cassie (aka Summer Reading 2008)

Your heart is a fist of blood. Literally: your heart is the size of your fist, and made of blood.
 
It flows very well and the missing puncuation helps that obviously. I keep stop reading to stare into space though, like I always do.
 
I packed the book in my backpack today, but I forgot to start reading it on the train ride to work. :(
 
lol.. I finished it. I stared into space a lot too, but I was thinking of ways to help the man and the boy.
 
Cassie said:
There is really something nice about how straightforward the writing is. It's almost minimalist (or some fancy word like that).
Click to expand...

McCarthy definitely utilizes an "economy of words" to tell this horrible, beautiful story.
 
^YES. exactly.

Toxic, the poor boy was so traumatized that he was fearful of evrything, IMHO. No wonder he'd just freeze.

I'm trying to get around a child seeing what he saw, and endured, nevermind how traumatized I'd be, living in that world.
And yet how awful, how much worse, really, for the adults who remembered the old world.
What wonderful pared - down diction ("minimalist" is perfect, Cassie!)
The descriptions are so vivid, nothing's wasted.


I havent finished yet -
THE DAD DIES, DOESN'T HE?
:(
 
i know it's a lot to expect of the boy, to be brave and tough in a destroyed world. but then again, this boy has no experience of the old world, so i wonder why he's so sympathetic to others sometimes. I know that that's because McCarthy wants to show just how much influence and love his dad has on him, but i think that would be really hard to impart. still, in the grand scheme of things, whatever i think about the boy hasn't turned me off this book at all. it was one of the more intense reading experiences i've had in a long, long time.
 
Although the book doesn't go much into the man and boy's history, I get the impression that the man tries to keep the boy as human as he possibly can. Seeing so much, and being so afraid all the time and still somehow the man keeps convincing the boy that there is hope. I like how he tells him that he carries the fire.

Answer to your question, curiousa2z... don't look!
Yes the man dies.. that's all I'm gonna say about that. Let me know when you've read the end.
 
Done.

Damn! bittersweet end. I admit to a Kleenex moment.


OK, I promise to post no more spoilers till everyone's finished.
 
yup

i'm a boy, so i'm not supposed to cry - so i went outside where nobody could see me and got all watery. even knowing it was coming didn't make it easier to deal with.
 
How'd you guys feel about never knowing their names? I think that is the first time I've ever read a book like this one.
 
That was the one thing I felt was "off". The boy called the dad "Papa", but he never called his beloved son by name? I'd have to check and see if McCarthy was a parent, but as a parent, gotta say, that didn't ring true. It bugged me, but then I stopped noticing it as the story went on.
Was the author trying to leave the notion open that it could be anyone from any ethnic group (well, that had "pale skin")?
 
ok, wikied him, and there's this bit:

"Talk show host Oprah Winfrey chose McCarthy's 2006 novel, The Road, as the April 2007 selection for her Book Club.[1] In addition, McCarthy agreed to sit down for his first television interview, which aired on The Oprah Winfrey Show on June 5, 2007. The interview took place in the library of the Santa Fe Institute; McCarthy told Winfrey that he does not know any writers and much prefers the company of scientists. During the interview he related several stories illustrating the degree of outright poverty he has endured at times during his career as a writer. He also spoke about the experience of fathering a child at an advanced age, and how his now eight-year-old son was the inspiration for The Road."
ok, so that blows that theory. Mccarthy IS a dad...

WHY wouldn't he name the child?
 
Only one person in the entire book had a name, and it wasn't even his real name. The boy was born after the world ended, maybe he wasn't even given a name. Lots of little details that most other books would have included were completely left out. It's like he left out everything that didn't matter to the basic story.
 
boy, that's really giving up hope to not even name your kid. maybe that's what the writer wanted to convey.
 
Yeah.. it's hard to say. I was trying to find some information, like info that CM might have given himself, but I haven't found any yet (I didn't look very hard). I did read a little bit of what was on Oprah's site, there's a section where CM's scientist friends explain what MIGHT have happened in the book.. lol they don't even know.
 
I think the boy had a name, it was just that to McCarthy the name wasn't important, just like he never says what actually happened to the earth.
 
Is there going to be a movie version?
 
Yeah, he probably did have a name.. but I bet his mom isn't the one who named him.

Yes, there is going to be a movie. Aragorn is the man!
 
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