So I thought I'd paste a book review I posted on goodreads today:
The Road by Cormac McCarthyMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book was very good. If I were writing an official review, I'd probably try to use a word like "harrowing" or "haunting" or some such adjective...and then I'd decide that it was an inadequate description and I'd rack my brain for a more suitable description...eventually determining that each new one was just as unsuitable as the first...
So I'm glad I'm not writing an official review. And I can just say "this book was very good" and leave it at that...
...except I can't leave it at that. Because, despite the "very good"-ness of this book, I don't think it was nearly as monumental as do those who have written official reviews.
Do I think it shouldn't have won the Pulitzer? No, I think that honor may have been well-deserved. Other honors, however, seem a bit preposterous to me. What honors could be bigger than the Pulitzer, you ask?
Well, Entertainment Weekly concluded that The Road is the best book in the last 25 years. British environmentalist George Monbiot determined, after reading The Road, that author Cormac McCarthy is one of 50 people "who could save the planet."
Monbiot also claimed that The Road is the "most important environmental book ever written." That quote first startled me, and then it provided the enlightenment for which I was looking.
Never once while reading The Road did I think of it as an environmental book. Looking back on it, I still don't.
A father and son are traveling a road in a post-apocalyptic world. The earth is bitter cold, covered in ash, and no longer capable of sustaining healthy life. If you want to claim this setting makes The Road an environmental book, fine. But then I'll claim it's the most important civil engineering book ever written---a testament to the durability and longevity of our finely-constructed roads.
The book, thankfully, contains no explanation for the ash that permeates everything, nor does it explain the eternal coldness. It doesn't say that humans destroyed the earth...
...and if readers want to infer that, I suppose that's their prerogative. And I suppose that prerogative will continue to elevate The Road's status in our increasingly environment-loving world.
In my opinion, The Road is a good book. If you're reading it as a caution against destroying the environment, then perhaps you will see it as a great book.
But if that were the real message behind it, if that were the thread on which the story relied, it would actually detract from the beauty of the story---a story about a father and son and their unbreakable bond, a story about the perseverance of man and the willingness to suffer in the hope that hope might still exist. That's what makes The Road a good book, not some subtle---and dare I say, petty---environmental warning.
I would recommend The Road for anyone. Including you overzealous environmentalists...and the overzealous civil engineers, wherever they might be.
View all my reviews.
1 comment:
Good review. I liked it, but also found it unsettling (which is not necessarily a bad thing). But you are right - I don't think it is quite as monumental as the reviewers might claim. Still, an interesting book, well-written, and in a unique voice, with unique descriptions.
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