When I first picked up Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Road, I did what I always do – tweeted it (#reading). Mistake. I had three people immediately tweet back with comments along the lines of “That’s a sure way to ruin 2012” and “Got the Prozac ready?” and “Don’t do it. I was miserable and confused for weeks.”

So I read with a sense of detachment – it’s a shame, I suspect I would have got so much more out of the book if I’d allowed myself to invest in the characters.

The Road tells the story of an unnamed man and his young son, making their way across a grim post-apocalyptic landscape. The air is filled with ash, no plants or animals remain, ghost towns and corpses litter the land. The few humans who are still alive resort to scavenging, cannibalism and thieving to survive. Continue reading →