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I reread The Road 20 years on. It was even more devastating
Key Points
Earlier this year, the New Scientist Book Club took on Tim Winton’s Juice, a brilliant, terrifying tale of a scorched future Australia. Reading it, I knew I would have to return to a title it reminded me of: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I first read this in 2006, and loved (if that’s the word) its vision of a post-apocalyptic US, all ash, dead trees and horrors.
Earlier this year, the New Scientist Book Club took on Tim Winton’s Juice, a brilliant, terrifying tale of a scorched future Australia. Reading it, I knew I would have to return to a title it reminded me of: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
I first read this in 2006, and loved (if that’s the word) its vision of a post-apocalyptic US, all ash, dead trees and horrors. I also admired (a better word, maybe) the film, directed by John Hillcoat, with Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as father and son, trekking through this blasted land to the coast. Twenty years on, a little more mature, I found it devastating. McCarthy’s portrait of a father, living only for his son, is so tender, so heart-breaking; of a son, born into a nightmare world, just shattering.
I’ve moved on to Blood Meridian, McCarthy’s brutal tale set in the 19th-century US and Mexico. A film, also directed by Hillcoat, is in the offing. Since McCarthy and Hillcoat are masters of their craft, I predict it will be great, if I can stomach it.
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