Books this year: a book diary

This novel is among the bleakest and most depressing I’ve ever read, and it was great. I read it in a single day (much to the annoyance of my wife and child, as I mostly ignored them for that day).

It is, in one sense, post-apocalyptic fiction, as it takes place after a nuclear war. But unlike most novels (or movies) of that genre (or at least the examples I’m familiar with - A Canticle for Lebowitz, the Terminator trilogy, anything with zombies), which are generally broad, even global, in scope, this novel focuses on the struggles of one man and his son to survive in a nuclear wasteland.

In some ways, the novel is quite repetitive, but brilliantly so - the near-constant references to the bleak, dusty grayness of the landscape, the man’s deteriorating health, and the pair’s never-ending search for food, water, and shelter all serve to make vividly real the novel’s world. I have a tendency to imaginatively inhabit the world of any novel I’m reading, so I may be overstating things, but I think McCarthy has done an excellent job of making the hell such a world would be apprehensible, realistic, and, well, vivid.

What made it so depressing and, at various points, suspenseful or horrifying, was not the physical landscape, but the Solzhenitsynian accuracy with which McCarthy imagines the thoughts, emotions, and actions of his characters. I won’t say more than that, or I won’t be able to stop. Worth reading, but only if you don’t vomit easily.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 10:57 pm and is filed under Books Chris has read, 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.