asandwich

My initial impressions of The Road were not great. In fact, by page ten or so, I was convinced that I wouldn’t enjoy this book: the prose felt well and truly overcooked and the lack of quotation marks irked me because it added unnecessary confusion to the dialogue. Fortunately, before long, the writing became noticeably less lumpen and I simply stopped caring about the lack of useful punctuation, instead finding myself wholly captivated by the plight of the two nameless principal characters as they struggle to survive in the barren wilderness of a post-apocalyptic American wasteland.

To describe this book as ‘bleak’ feels like a massive understatement, but - and maybe this is just because I’m a such a morbid weirdo - there’s also something utterly beautiful that permeates through all of the hopelessness and the ever-encroaching finality: yes, the very worst of human nature is well-represented in The Road, but so is the desire to cherish, to protect and to love, and to keep on pushing, keep moving forward, even in the face of an entirely certain outcome; because you have to, because this is what defines us. This is what makes us human.