Is it possible to love and hate a book in equal measure?
After raving at length, the Panther insisted I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
So, in spite of Terry Pratchett and because of Philip Pullman, I picked up the volume.
Hopes weren’t high, it has to be said. A “post-apocalyptic fight for survival” doesn’t fill me with the kind of glee a fresh Val McDermid might.
But from the first page, I was hooked. McCarthy’s stark tale of a father and son’s painful journey to the south coast of a scorched and ruined country is difficult to put down.
The reader is terrified for the pair – seemingly the only ‘good’ humans left in a world of feral cannibalistic survivors – so pages turn fast rushing for news of their salvation.
On the way, McCarthy’s economic writing has you there in the cold, wet, ashy wasteland, alert to danger and hunched against the inevitable agonies. Once the book has been put down, the images are still there behind the eyelids.
The writing is beautiful – capturing the doomed landscapes and the hope still alive in the face of the fear – but it isn’t much fun. There’s enough lightness to make it bearable – just.
Undeniably worthy of the Pulitzer and I’m glad I read it, but I’m sure I didn’t enjoy a single minute of it.