The Road: Amazon.de: Cormac McCarthy: Englische Bücher

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Best known for his Border Trilogy, hailed in the San Francisco Chronicle as "an American classic to stand with the finest literary achievements of the century," Cormac McCarthy has written ten rich and often brutal novels, including the bestselling No Country for Old Men, and The Road. Profoundly dark, told in spare, searing prose, The Road is a post-apocalyptic masterpiece, one of the best books we've read this year, but in case you need a second (and expert) opinion, we asked Dennis Lehane, author of equally rich, occasionally bleak and brutal novels, to read it and give us his take. Read his glowing review below. --Daphne Durham

Guest Reviewer: Dennis Lehane

Dennis Lehane, master of the hard-boiled thriller, generated a cult following with his series about private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, wowed readers with the intense and gut-wrenching Mystic River, blew fans all away with the mind-bending Shutter Island, and switches gears with Coronado, his new collection of gritty short stories (and one play).

Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehane

-- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

From Booklist

A man and a boy, father and son, "each the other's world entire," walk a road in "the ashes of the late world." In this stunning departure from his previous work, McCarthy (No Country for Old Men, 2005) envisions a postapocalyptic scenario. Cities have been destroyed, plants and animals have died, and few humans survive. The sun is hidden by ash, and it is winter. With every scrap of food looted, many of the living have turned to cannibalism. The man and the boy plod toward the sea. The man remembers the world before; as his memories die, so, too dies that world. The boy was born after everything changed. The man, dying, has a fierce paternal love and will to survive--yet he saves his last two bullets for himself and his son. Although the holocaust is never explained, this is the kind of grim warning that leads to nightmares. Its spare, precise language is rich with other explorations, too: hope in the face of hopelessness, the ephemeral nature of our existence, the vanishing worlds we all carry within us. McCarthy evokes Beckett, using repetition and negation to crushing effect, showing us by their absence the things we will miss. Hypnotic and haunting, relentlessly dark, this is a novel to read in late-night solitude. Though the focus never leaves the two travelers, they carry our humanity, and we can't help but feel the world hangs in the balance of their hopeless quest. A masterpiece. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

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15 von 15 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

A road trip through hell 10. August 2007

Von Mark Wakely

Format:Taschenbuch

Cormac Mccarthy's The Road is a dark, post apocalyptic journey through the remnants of the world as we know it, with the faintest flicker of hope at the end.

Destroyed by some never quite explained catastrophe, the Earth has become nearly inhospitable to life. A thick ash smothers everything and hangs in the sky, making a cold, quiet moonscape where things had once been green and alive. Through this nightmare world travels bands of desperate survivors, including an unnamed man and his son. The father's plan is to travel south to warmth and the ocean, where he hopes to find their salvation. Along the way they are confronted by cannibals, thugs and others as adrift as they are, a Darwinian struggle reminiscent to some degree of the lost boys in The Lord of the Flies, but far more sinister and disturbing. In particular, the image of the captives of the cannibals- who are being eaten bit by bit, shrinking grotesquely but kept alive so their flesh remains fresh- is a vision of Hell right out of Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. Calling themselves "the good guys," the father and son still carry a gun- with two bullets- to end their lives if needed rather than suffer a crueler fate. The father also struggles with the ethical dilemma of having to "unteach" his son about compassion and empathy, afraid that the boy- who wants to help those equally in need- will only die in the attempt. This "every man for himself" situation is in stark contrast to everything the father believes, and how the boy has been raised. It's this struggle to hang on to the noble aspects of humanity while surrounded by the worse that makes the novel insightful, haunting, and a riveting read.

Mark Wakely, author of An Audience for Einstein

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8 von 8 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich

Dark and masterful vision of post-apocalyptic America with strong Christian undertones 11. Mai 2007

Von Dominic Berlemann

Format:Taschenbuch

This outstanding work deals with a man and his son who are trying to survive in an America struck by some unnamed catastrophe of biblical proportions. Almost everybody has perished, the man's wife, traumatized by the events has commited suicide, fauna and flora are nearly extinguished and the chances of survival are minimal. The few remaining humans forage this barren world for food, and in the face of starvation resort to unspeakable forms of cannibalism (which is a recurrent motif in McCarthy's fiction). McCarthy portrays this infernal scenario in a beautifully spartanic and extremely dense language. The strength of this highly impressive novel lies in McCarthy's ability to convey his Christian and existentialist philosophy in a context devoid of unnecessarily detailed plot or complexity. The emotional impact of the developing father - son relationship against the backdrop of the father's deteriorating health are deeply moving and the final pages of the book bring the tears to your eyes. The intelligent father's almost scientific scepticism turns into misanthropic paranoia under the horrific circumstances and every meeting with other people becomes an extremely stressful event dominated by outbursts of violence. The son in his childlike innocence ponders a more cooperative approach to the situation, but he always follows his father as long as he is alive. Yet despite all the dark melancholia and senseless brutality the son finally finds a more promising way of dealing with the challenges of this nightmarish world: he joins a group of people trying to survive by way of supporting one another. It's not an all-male group either and therefore it seems to offer the theoretical opportunity of continuing the biological reproduction of the human race. By that McCarthy demonstrates that only philanthropic faith-inspired optimism can lead to a peaceful coexistence of men, however harsh living conditions may be. So in the end, there is hope, if only a dim one. If you buy this book, you'll not regret it.

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Not usually a fan of McCarthy, but The Road is brilliant and a significant departure 24. Oktober 2007

Von Frans Stoops

Format:Taschenbuch

In terms of its seeming simplicity, from other novels he has written. Dark, terrifying and powerful, this is one of the finest American novels in years. Its structure and muscular prose are so stark and well-crafted, this story picks you up, shakes you and won't let go even after you've read the final page. Also, if you missed Tino Georgiou's masterful novel--The Fates, go and read it.It is the first novel of the century that could rightly be called a masterpiece.

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