The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. In this landscape everything is dead and burnt, the sun is blotted out by ash, all plants and animals are extinct, and most humans are either lone travelers or members of cannibalistic communes. Our reviewer, Alan Cheuse, teaches writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.Ĭopyright © 2006 NPR. The Road takes place after some unknown apocalyptic event has nearly wiped out the earth. 8, 2006 Cormac McCarthy’s subject in his new novel is as big as it gets: the end of the civilized world, the dying of life on the. Shoring old linguistic ruins against the bleakness.īLOCK: The book is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy Review first published Oct.

The only one speaking remotely like a God is the writer himself. On this road we hear there are no God, spoke men. The man's wife has committed suicide and since then, man and boy have been on the road salvaging what they can in a region ravaged by pitiless cannibals, their travels circumscribed by gray sunless days and nights that are sightless and impenetrable.Īs readerss we do something similar, reading our way into a scenario in which light is spare, danger ever present and the only hope the possibility of the remnants, food and clothing and shelter, of a civilization that will never return. Survivors suffer from endless physical and psychic concussions.Īmong these are a father and son traveling from north to south on the East Coast of the United States. A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions.

The Road is a post-atomic apocalypse novel, as we've never seen it before. Our reviewer, Alan Cheuse, says it's a dark book that glows with the intensity of McCarthy's genius for language.ĪLAN CHEUSE: Cormac McCarthy, who could turn the instructions for operating a microwave oven into something resembling a King James Bible, ventures here in his own way into science fiction. Cormac McCarthy has recently published a new novel.

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