Audiobook--The Road

The Road
Cormac McCarthy
Read by Tom Stechschulte

Cormac McCarthy's The Road is a powerful and involving book--high praise for a story that essentially has no plot.

The Road is set in an unspecified future, after what appears to be a nuclear cataclysm has devastated the world, or at least the part of the world we're shown in the course of the novel. The nature of the cataclysm is never explicitly discussed, but the description of a distant flash and the ensuing nuclear winter-shrouded landscape makes it fairly clear.

The story itself focuses on a father and his son, never given names, who are traveling "The Road," trying to reach the coast. The holocaust seems to have destroyed all life except human beings. The only available food is canned goods and other stores that they can raid along the way, as well as the occasional edible vegetation, including a memorable apple tree. The man and the boy peripherally encounter elements of the remaining human race, which has largely slid into an animalistic existence. One group keeps people in a cellar for food. Another cooks babies. The main characters discuss what they will and won't to do survive, clinging to their identity as "good guys," but as the story progresses this line seems less and less clear.

My major problems with this book were technical. McCarthy's refusal to supply names to anyone is metaphorically sound, but isn't always executed as well as it could be, leaving room for pronoun confusion that makes the reader stumble (or the listener, in this case). Also, I'm glad I didn't try to read this in book form, or I would have given up after a chapter or so. (God gave us quotation marks for a reason, sir. Use them.) The lack of female characters is disturbing, as well. The mother, shown in flashbacks, committed suicide to avoid the savagery she knew would grow around them. Other female characters are faceless and enslaved, until the very end, and even this nameless woman is barely given shape.

Tom Stechschulte's reading was flawless. Avoiding all the slips and confusions of McCarthy's style, he made the book completely understandable and added a powerful dramatic flair that only drew me in deeper. His treatment emphasized McCarthy's spare prose and added an emotional element that made this a truly dramatic presentation, not just an audiobook.