The Road, finally

Thursday, 6:35 am

By Kate

Feb

05

2009

Last evening I scanned through my digital pile of books on my Kindle to see which one I might be in the mood to read. I was thinking along the lines of light-hearted, but somehow my finger clicked on Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I took it to bed with me, thinking I might plow through one chapter before my eyelids drooped.

Well, not quite. After several chapters, I had to put it aside or I’d have read all night. What a magnificant book.

The Road is about the bleakest book I can remember reading. The story is bleak. The landscape is bleak. The colors are cold and bleak. But the language is oh-so-rich. He paints detailed pictures with words. And yet, the sentence structure is quite spare—except for the similes that pepper every page. One would think that might distract, but they are just so exquisite and they flow so naturally. It’s a work of art.

I have never read anything else by Cormac McCarthy, so I am unfamiliar with his style of writing. I wonder if the spare style in this book was intentional to mirror the bleakness of the story. If so, it works beautifully. It that is his usual style, well, it still works beautifully.

There is not a single word in the book, so far, that could be removed nor one that needs to be added. It is about as perfect as anything I have ever read. And I don’t recall having ever thought that about a book. I wish I’d tucked into it sooner. And yet, I’m in no rush to finish it. Savoring each page slowly is the only way to go.