Book review: The Road

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I'm glad Mccarthy got his money's worth on the thesaurus he bought before setting out to write this monstrous piece of horse shit; here's a stellar example of his verbosity: the boy "was lean, wiry, rachitic". Really? "was" lean? Not "appeared" or the multitude of better words? I guess he used up all his energy looking up different way to say "skinny" that he had to phone it in with the easiest helping verb of all time. Oh, is it a testament to the sparse language of the book, you say? The writing is meant to parallel the bleak journey on the Road, Mr. McCarthy? Priceless metaphor, dickworm.

Another tiring-as-fuck metaphor from "The Road": hope. The hope coursing through the pilgrims upon arriving at a potentially lucrative spot (a house with food, boat...) paralleled my brief flickers of excitement that "oh, this is an interesting part....wait no. This book still sucks". I, like the boy and the man, trudged down The Road, waiting for something better. It's over now and I'm kind of wishing for the apocalypse.

Oh, and I wonder if it was cold? That wasn't beat into me hard enough.

Ironically, the only line which really resonated perfectly encapsulates this book: "He tried to remember the dream but he could not. All that was left was the feeling of it...". I can't remember anything valuable in this book, only the feeling of misery and self-loathing after having read it.


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