Book Look review of "Blink"

Book Look

Debbie Balzotti

“The Road”
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize 2007

Cormac McCarthy is a brilliant, original author. There I have said it. I felt compelled to read and review this book because it is a winner. The big winner – the best American novel of 2007. I should know better because I have not had the best experiences with winners in the past.
My first clue that I was not going to start the McCarthy fan club after reading “The Road” was the Oprah’s Book Club seal of approval on the front cover. This is the kiss of death. I usually drop the book and move along the shelf to where I can find a book that I will enjoy reading. Why does Oprah only read depressing books? I am going to send her my happy reading list. She may be the richest, most powerful woman in America, but she needs to loosen up and enjoy an uplifting book once in a while.
McCarthy has written a sparse post apocalyptic novel that leaves the reader with little hope for the survival of our human species. It is the story of a nameless father and son traveling on a road towards the coast hoping to find something. We do not know much about the father or the son, except that the father is sick with something and the boy is old enough to talk and walk. We do not know for sure what ruined the world and turned it to grey ash, although it seems to have been an atomic catastrophe. We do not know where the millions of other people have gone, despite references to fires and cholera and roving bands of cannibalistic murderers.
Brutal scenes are at every turn in the road. A basement filled with starving people chained up as a food supply; pregnant women enslaved by vicious gangs of men; the torso of a baby left smoking over an abandoned campfire. These are only a few of the nightmares the author sketches in black and white for his reader.
The creative energy is strong and the literary style is fascinating but the central theme of the love between a father and a son is not enough for me to recommend it. I am sure that I could be accused of being a shallow reader at times, but life is short (as McCarthy reminds us) and I feel that I wasted some of mine reading “The Road”. You may not want to go down this miserable road.