It is the ending of The Road that people talk about. As you read it, a terror unfolds. Is McCarthy taking us to the end of the road, the end of all life? Can there be a happy ending, or at least a glimmer of hope?

The Earth has been scorched and most people, animals and vegetation destroyed. A rotten apple is the cue for gratitude; it seems miraculous that it can be found under the blanket of grey dust. The two central characters, a father and son, trudge towards the coast. They encounter evil. Survivors are enslaved or stored as food. There is a fate worse than death and the father makes sure that his son knows this. Monnie Black cried, as many readers must have, but found the finale uplifting. Amid the stench of death, the fear and the anger, some do the right thing.

They maintain morality, they believe in God or, if not God, in humanity. The son is a messiah. He is young, he has not been captured and he knows what is good and what is sinful. Above all, he wants to help others in a world where most think that they have no choice but to put themselves first.

Star letter

I had no idea that The Road would be quite so moving. I settled down to read the last 30 pages wearing a face mask. What a mistake! I was supposed to keep my features still, but I twitched in sorrow. I have been recommending the book to my friends who are concerned that it sounds too sad. But I have reassured them that at the very end you feel uplifted. It is hardly a happy ending in the traditional sense but is as happy as it could be, given that the Earth has practically been burnt to a crisp. In a strange way the ending felt realistic.

The only way for mankind to struggle on would be to believe in God or to believe in the goodness of those who have died while protecting the ones they loved. The boy does not have to be religious but he does need to believe in goodness while, all around him, some choose an evil path for survival.

Monnie Black
Suffolk

November 23, 2007

A haunting apocalyptic parable of a grief-stricken father and son with a message for every parent

A WRITER CAN HAVE FUN WITH THE end of the world. Will humanity be destroyed by conventional war, nuclear holocaust, hunger, plague, venomous plants, biological weapons, poisonous gas, a collision with a comet or alien invasion?

In 1894 all ways seemed possible. In Olga Romanoff, George Griffith wrote about destruction by a comet and aliens. Perhaps that seemed more plausible than global warming. Today, Griffith’s works seem almost unreadable, with their talk of “Children of Deliverance” and “the Doom of the World”. But he kick-started a genre. H. G. Wells was a fan of M. P. Shiel, whose tale of the Earth’s vulnerability to poisonous gas, The Purple Cloud, was published in 1901. Wells himself had bold visions of the future, as is demonstrated by his enduring The War of the Worlds, with its spying Martians, intent on attacking Earth.

Fiction built around the possibility of mass destruction is full of suspense. In Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, Australia awaits the fallout from the Third World War to hit its shores. The dilemma is whether to face the radiation or swallow cyanide pills to avoid a long and painful death.

Now, with The Road, post-apocalyptic fiction comes full circle. For Cormac McCarthy ignores what other writers make the core of their work — he does not tell us how the world was damaged, but plunges us straight into the post-apocalyptic crisis. There are no explosions, fire-ridden skies or hurtling asteroids. All is quiet and bleak. the hungry survivors are divided into two classes — those who eat other people and those who do not.

But there is probably as much suspense as in any work contemplating the Earth’s destruction. The father and son who trudge along the road are surrounded by death and think about it always. The father occasionally sinks into despair. He cannot remember the names of colours or birds or things to eat. The odds are against them, but if mankind has any hope, they have to survive. “Are we still the good guys?” the boy asks. If not, then all is lost.

At times the tension is unbearable. The boy is nervous about the derelict houses that they search for food and shelter. Will they find a precious tin of peaches or a cellar full of people waiting to be slaughtered for meat? For McCarthy to produce poetic beauty from this vision of mass destruction is remarkable.

'McCarthy's subject is as big as it gets'

The Road was published to huge acclaim in America, winning this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Here is a selection of the reviews:

“I read this book in one take late at night and immediately headed downstairs to kick up the fire and drink some bourbon. I was cold, chilled emotionally, stunned, awestruck by McCarthy’s words. I mentioned The Road to a singer-songwriter friend and all he could say was: ‘That one put me off my feed for a few days.’ Knowing the guy as I do, I took the comment as high praise . . . Dark is dark and some of us have arcane addictions.”

John Holt
California Literary Review

“McCarthy’s subject is as big as it gets: the end of the civilised world, the dying of life on the planet and the spectacle of it all. He has written a visually stunning picture of how it looks at the end to two pilgrims on the road to nowhere. Colour in the world — except for fire and blood — exists mainly in memory or dream . . . McCarthy has said that death is the major issue in the world and that writers who don’t address it are not serious. Death reaches very near totality in this novel. Billions of people have died, all animal and plant life . . .”

William Kennedy
The New York Times

“Many authors have imagined a post-nuclear world. McCarthy is particularly well suited because he writes so beautifully and convincingly about violence, despair and men in desperate situations . . . There are subtle references to the Bible, Greek mythology and history. But amid this Godot-like bleakness, McCarthy shares something vital and enduring about the boy’s spirit, his father’s love and the nature of bravery itself.”

Dierdre Donahue
USA Today

And what The Times said: “Fiction doesn’t get much bleaker than this. Nor does it get much better.”

Tom Gatti

November 9, 2007

A haunting apocalyptic parable of a grief-stricken father and son with a message for every parent

THE ROAD WAS AWARDED THE 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It is not, though, a particularly American book. In fact, it could be set almost anywhere — for the world has all but ended and few have survived.

We don't know what has happened to create Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic backdrop. My own book club decided a natural disaster had occurred. Strangely, it is the omission of detail about the catastrophe that makes the book so powerful. We join a man and his young son as they trek towards the coast. They are not in shock; they have become accustomed to the grey, sterile landscape, to the need to be invisible to avoid capture by men who have lost their humanity. They talk to each other with the economy that comes from extreme grief. There is much love but too much weariness and hunger for what would have passed for ordinary father/son chats before the earth was scorched.

The father needs his son to speak, however. He needs to know that he has not given up; that he wants to live even though there is little to live for. Every time the father asks his child what he is thinking or how he feels, there is an overwhelming sense of all the parents who have asked nothing, who have despaired and in the midst of disaster have lost even their ability to put their offspring first.

I found some pages almost unbearably distressing but did not want to skip a single word. The Road is exceptionally well written. There are moments of absolute horror and of startling beauty and its imagery will surely haunt all those privileged to read it.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Picador, £7.99

Picador is giving away ten copies of The Road by Cormac McCarthy to two books groups. Please e-mail your group's name and address to books@thetimes.co.uk.

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