Mommy Brain

Last night, I finished the second of the Thursday Next novels that Michelle gave me for my birthday. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to pick up next. I’m still reading The Year of Living Biblically, and it’s very entertaining, but I always like to have some fiction going, too. Then I saw Sherry at Semicolon’s Saturday Review of Books post come up on my Bloglines, and I was reminded that I still have two books to read before the end of the year to complete my Saturday Review of Books Challenge. So I took The Road to bed with me. Kevin was tired enough that he said it wouldn’t bother him if I read for awhile.

Around page two, my thoughts were something like this: I’m not going to like this book. But I’ll give it a little longer. What was that rule in Book Lust? Take your age and subtract it from 100. The difference is the number of pages you should give a book before you give up on it. (The theory being that the older you are, the less time you have to waste on books that you don’t like.) I just turned 35, so I’ll give it to page 65.

Around page 25, I knew I would finish this book. At page 122, as I wiped away the tears I wept when the father and son found the underground hatch filled with supplies, I looked at the clock. It was 12:45 a.m. I turned off the lamp, and proceeded to think about the book until I finally drifted off to sleep around 2 a.m.

I finished the book this morning. I’m still thinking about it; I’m not sure what to say or how to do a review. How Cormac McCarthy made me care so desperately for characters that didn’t even have names, I’ll never understand. I suppose that is what brilliance in an author is.

This book is a post-apocalyptic book about what our world would be like after a cataclysmic disaster, like a nuclear holocaust. The picture McCarthy paints is horrifying. There is nothing left alive: no livestock, no birds singing, nothing to eat. There are a few roaming bands of humans who have reverted to their animalistic nature, capturing any other people they come upon for the purpose of eating them. There are some truly terrible scenes in this book; it is very realistic in its depiction of what desperation and starvation will drive some people to do.

On the other hand, the father and son who are at the center of the book show the best of human nature. The father is close to hopeless, but because he has his son, he holds on to the last bit he can. They are carrying the fire, he tells his son. They are the good guys. The father is keeping himself alive for the sake of his son, and all the while his heart is breaking at the things his son is having to experience and witness.

I won’t say anymore, for the sake of not giving away the plot. Just read it. Have a box of tissue handy. And hug your kids. Hug them.