This book sat on my shelf for a decade because I was too scared to read it. It’s great, everyone said. It’s great, but it’s heavy. It is both of those things. It’s also, unexpectedly, the best book on fatherhood I’ve ever read. More on that later. Plotwise, The Road is not paving (haha) any new terrain: An apocalyptic event occurred within the last decade, and the survivors are trying to eke out an existence. The main threat isn’t the scarred earth – it’s the other […]
There is no forgiveness. For women. A man may lose his honor and regain it again. But a woman cannot. She cannot.
CBR10Bingo – AND SO IT BEGINS and THIS IS THE END So this series of books came out in the 1990s and sort of represents a significant shift in Cormac McCarthy’s writing or more so signals the closing of the second phase of his writing and he moved toward the final section (depending on how much more he publishes — he’s pretty old). The first phase is more or less represented through his Tennessee novels. These novels are (simplistically) defined by working within the Southern […]
The Road redux
I read this novel when it first came out in 2006 or so. I was teaching for my first year in Baltimore and I read this novel is my bare-ass room in a basement apartment in Baltimore. I had recently read and reviewed No Country for Old Men, and so the spare details of the novel and it’s subject was a lot to take. This time around I listened to the audiobook while I cleaned out my gross ass basement. Like super gross. Bugs. Spidewebs. Muck. […]
“They bred dogs for everything else…why didnt they breed them to live longer?”
Yet another post-apocalyptic novel set in the not too distant future. I know. It’s like every fifth book written these days is set during the end of humanity. I suppose that says something about the fatalism of America in a post 9/11, post-truth world. But this isn’t the Walking Dead. There isn’t a zombie in sight, in fact. The Dog Stars is more The Thin Red Line meets The Road. It’s a somber reflection of the end of the world, at times haunting and told in a lyrical […]