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Smile Store - The Road (Oprah's Book Club)
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List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $8.97
Your Save: $ 5.98 ( 40% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Vintage Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307387899
ISBN: 0307387895
Label: Vintage Books
Manufacturer: Vintage Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 287
Publication Date: 2007-03-28
Publisher: Vintage Books
Release Date: 2007-03-28
Studio: Vintage Books
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Editorial Reviews:
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER
National Book Critic's Circle Award Finalist
A New York Times Notable Book
One of the Best Books of the Year
The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times, New York, People, Rocky Mountain News, Time, The Village Voice, The Washington Post
The searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-—and each other.
The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Dreary Road Weaving Through a Bleak Future
Comment: I finally got around to reading what is already acknowledged as a modern day masterpiece and I found it to be lyrically beautiful and profoundly disturbing at the same time. "The Road" is Cormac McCarthy's haunting vision of a post-apocalyptic world where values are confused, goodness is debatable, and love remains the central value worth living for.
McCarthy's beautifully spare prose is captivating in its simplicity yet his words haunt the reader long after putting the book down. Readers who value structure in a novel will be uncomfortable with "The Road" because it is written in a free flow stream of consciousness style that just begins on the road to the sea and ends on the road by the sea. The two main characters are unnamed and referred to only as the man and the boy. Questions about what happened to cause the apocalypse, who the man is (was), why are they going where they are going arise throughout but are seldom, if ever, answered. The answers are --it doesn't matter--but that may be too nebulous for some readers. Our job as readers is to get on board with the father/son journey on "The Road" and experience life and death, good and evil through their eyes.
Simply summarized, a father and his son (maybe 9 or 10 years old) are following a road toward the sea. The world as we know it is gone through some apocalyptic event and the world they face is grim and dreary covered in a post nuclear winter where gray ash covers all, no life is left in the sky or the seas, and those who continue to struggle for survival seem split into those of some goodness who mainly hide from those who have embraced evil as marauders and even cannibals.
"The Road" is a study in contrasts...the contrast of good versus evil, but also the contrast between what we say we are and what our actions say we really are. It is a study of the perseverance of faith and love and how that reflects one's goodness and continuing spirit. We are left to ask ourselves, would we have the inner spirit to do what the man does out of love for his child while inwardly coming to believe the journey is doomed for one or both of them? And if we felt we were ultimately doomed, what would our responsibility be to our young child who would be left alone in this devastated world?
Customer Rating:
Summary: READ THIS BOOK
Comment: This is a hard book for me to describe. It is the first novel that I have ever read by Cormac McCarthy and, perhaps, will be the only one I ever read. The Road is by turns hopeful, bleak, devestating, horrifying and... Wll, just nearly impossible to put down. From the opening scene in the unnamed fathers nighmare to the closing scenes it held my attention like few other novels have in recent years.
I cannot recommend this book enough. Read it, I believe you will not be disappointed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Over my head
Comment: I read it. But being a post-apocalyptic fan, this story felt short. The relationship between the father and the son was endearing, but the simplicity of the story which most people seemed to enjoy was actually what I enjoyed the least. It felt like I was watching an incredibly slow movie that would end up getting an Oscar.
Everyone is entitled to they're own opinion, but for post-apoc fans, I don't think you'll dig this one too much. But hey I might be wrong. I def was annoyed by the language throughout the whole book. But then again I didn't see what the big deal was abt. No Country for Old men either, so gauge this review on that.
Customer Rating:
Summary: In the midst of desolation and despair can good survive?
Comment:
THE ROAD is a brutal examination of what awaits mankind when the ultimate disaster strikes. A man and his son try to survive in the desolate wasteland the Earth has become; no explanation is given for this apocalypse, but the only survivors of it appear to be human. As the unnamed pair head south in the hopes of finding something other than the impending death winter will bring in the North, they confront what humanity has devolved into, wild packs that prey upon others for their own survival. Armed with a gun that has few bullets, the man uses his wits and a feral sense of survival to keep his son from falling prey to the elements and others. He finds himself hampered by his son's will to believe that he and his father are "good guys" searching for others like themselves, and when the situation class for drastic action, the boy is, in a way, humanity's last hope; the one thing keeping his father from descending to the level of the others they have encountered. McCarthy has succeeded in creating a realistic endpoint, the why and how are not important, it just is. The barren landscapes and the occasional breaks from danger that take place only continue to build the feelings of tension until the conclusion is reached, leaving this reader breathless. McCarthy's work is one of genius, an examination of how fragile our society is and it is filled with a sense of despair and wonder that few novels can hope to create.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Vivid, engaging and subliminal
Comment: Did you know McCarthy wrote 'No Country For Old Men'?
I was really surprised at the depth of the movie, but didn't know it was based on McCarthy's book until I started reading 'The Road'. Well, this changed the way I approached his book.
'The Road' is a very vivid, very engaging and at the same time very subliminal read.
It's a story of two survivors (of a mere handful) from a nuclear obliteration. They, a man and a child (McCarthy never names them in the book, or their ages) make their way to the Gulf Coast while at the same time battling their fears, the utter desolation, the human savagery (apparently all others have turned to cannibalism with no other food in sight) and the unknown that lays ahead.
In the midst of painting this environment, McCarthy explores the inner struggles of each of the two characters and make for a good case of what makes a man human and what makes him a savage. The book is written with exceptional clarity, the dialog is kept simple yet very meaningful.
I recommend it and if you haven't seen 'No Country For Old Men', put it on your to-view list.
by Simon Cleveland
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