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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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The Road
by Cormac McCarthy |
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Rating: |
***** |
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(Outstanding book-read it now) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Hope I’ll climb out
on a shaky limb and predict that Cormac McCarthy’s
new novel, The Road,
will become a classic and will be called his masterpiece. Set in They
camped against a boulder and he made a shelter of poles with the tarp. He got
a fire going and they set about dragging up a great brushpile
of wood to see them through the night. They’d piled a mat of dead hemlock
boughs over the snow and they sat wrapped in their blankets watching the
fire and drinking the last of the cocoa scavenged weeks before. It was
snowing again, soft flakes drifting down out of the blackness. He dozed in
the wonderful warmth. The boy’s shadow crossed over him. Carrying an armload
of wood. He watched him stoke the flames. God’s own firedrake. The sparks
rushed upward and died in the starless dark. Not all dying words are true
and this blessing is no less real for being shorn of its ground. He woke
toward the morning with the fire down to coals and walked out to the road.
Everything was alight. As if the lost sun were returning at last. The snow
orange and quivering. A forest fire was making its way along the tinderbox
ridges above them, flaring and shimmering against the overcast like the
northern lights. Cold as it was he stood there a long time. The color of it
moved something in him long forgotten. Make a list. Recite a litany.
Remember. It was
colder. Nothing moved in that high world. A rich smell of woodsmoke
hung over the road. He pushed the cart on through the snow. A few miles each
day. He’d no notion how far the summit might be. They ate sparely and they
were hungry all the time. He stood looking out over the country. A river far
below. How far had they come? In his
dream she was sick and he cared for her. The dream bore the look of sacrifice
but he thought differently. He did not take care of her and she died alone
somewhere in the dark and there is no other dream nor
other waking world and there is no other tale to tell. On this
road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I
am left and they have taken with them the world. Query: How does the never to
be differ from what never was? Dark of
the invisible moon. The nights now only slightly less black. By day the
banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp. People
sitting on the sidewalk in the dawn half immolate and smoking in their
clothes. Like failed sectarian suicides. Others would come to help them.
Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. The
screams of the murdered. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road.
What had they done? He thought that in the history of the world it might even
be that there was more punishment than crime but he took small comfort from
it. The air
grew thin and he thought the summit could not be far. Perhaps tomorrow.
Tomorrow came and went. It didn't snow again but the snow in the road was six
inches deep and pushing the cart up those grades was exhausting work. He
thought they would have to leave it. How much could they carry? He stood and
looked out over the barren slopes. The ash fell on the snow till it was all
but black. At every
curve it looked as though the pass lay just ahead and then one evening he
stopped and looked all about and he recognized it. He unsnapped the throat of
his parka and lowered the hood and stood listening. The wind in the dead
black stands of hemlock. The empty parking lot at the overlook. The boy
beside him. Where he’d stood once with his own father in a winter long ago.
What is it, Papa? the boy said. It’s the
gap. This is it. In the
morning they pressed on. It was very cold. Toward the afternoon it began to
snow again and they made camp early and crouched under the leanto of the tarp and watched the snow fall in the fire.
By morning there was several inches of new snow on
the ground but the snow had stopped and it was so quiet they could all but
hear their hearts. He piled wood on the coals and fanned the fire to life and
trudged out through the drifts to dig out the cart. He sorted through the
cans and went back and they sat by the fire and ate the last of their
crackers and a tin of sausage. In a pocket of his knapsack he’d found a last
half packet of cocoa and he fixed it for the boy and then poured his own cup
with hot water and sat blowing at the rim. You
promised not to do that, the boy said. What? You know
what, Papa. He poured
the hot water back into the pan and took the boy’s cup and poured some of the
cocoa into his own and then handed it back. I have to
watch you all the time, the boy said. I know. If you
break little promises you’ll break big ones. That’s what you said. I know.
But I wont. When
everything else falls away, there are just a few things that matter. In an
age of terror, artists have been struggling to make sense of world after
9/11, or the Shoah, or the genocides in several
countries. On the pages of The Road,
McCarthy tells a memorable story of three things that last, no matter what:
hope, love and faith, and the great of them all is love. Steve Hopkins,
November 20, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the December
2006 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Road.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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