currently reading: the road

I have never read any Cormac McCarthy before.  This is grim, raw, intermittently violent, and relentlessly dark.  The style, which grated slightly at first due to its wilful simplicity (no ‘distracting’ punctuation and the like and very Hemingwayish) has grown on me, and despite conveying a bleak and difficult world the prose flies by.

The story is of a father who is travelling across a ruined world after some ill-defined post-apocalyptic event (which seems to me almost certain to be nuclear war, but is alleged in some quarters to be the Biblical end-times) where the majority of humanity has disappeared and of the survivors, most have been reduced to animalistic behaviour and outright brutal savagery.  The commentary on humanity and the notion of a completely hopeless world are sharp and stay with you after you stop reading.  Not recommended for the middle of the night or people who have problems with frank depictions of cannibalism.

This is soon to be a film starring Viggo Mortenson, which seems like perfect casting to me: The Road trailer.