Book Review: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I read this book on the plane on the way back from San Francisco. I am a fan of the post-apocalyptic genre so I was pretty excited to find one that I hadn't heard of before. This was the most graphically heartbreaking vision of life after after the ___ that I have read. I won't give away the ending - I can't say everything ended badly - it was more that the whole book was an extended period of suffering. The main characters are a father and his young son, both of whom go unnamed throughout the book. I was on the verge of tears the whole time I read it. This is probably because now that I am a parent, I automatically imagine myself in the role of the parent in this book, and the thought of my child slowly starving is painful. Having said that, the writing was well done, and I couldn't put it down from start to finish. I must have read the whole thing in 2 hours, which means I should probably reread it again some time. And the truly brutal portrayal of post-apocalyptic life gives me much to think about in regards to my own future masterpiece (and no, I don't mean the dissertation!). Verdict: well worth reading, but not if you are already having a bad day.