The Best Post-Apocalyptic Novel Ever Written?
It’s hard to think of a more haunting work of fiction than Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Road. Set against a post-apocalyptic backdrop, the story centers on the survival of a father and son traversing what used to be America.
If you’re unfamiliar with Cormac McCarthy, he is perhaps most famous for his 1992 bestseller, All the Pretty Horses. He also penned the highly-acclaimed, Blood Meridian, as well as No Country For Old Men (which was adapted to film by the Cohen Brothers).
Stacked against modern-day prepper fantasy novels, The Road stands apart thanks to Cormac McCarthy’s masterful style and storytelling ability. You won’t find glamorous gun fights or cool-guy action scenes here. Instead, you’ll buckle in for a harrowing journey of survival in a wasteland that feels eerily similar to what the end of the world will probably feel like if/when it happens.
Referred to throughout the book only as “he”, the protagonist of the novel isn’t a prepared citizen. He isn’t sitting on stockpiles of food, water, and ammo to ride out the apocalypse. He’s a doctor whose main advantages post-armageddon are his wits and a raw survival instinct.
As the novel begins, we find him traveling across scorched earth with a shopping cart containing a handful of possessions. Armed with a revolver and two bullets, he must protect his young son from violent marauders and cannibals who scavenge what’s left of civilization.
As an author who comes from a literary-fiction Western background, you might wonder what led Cormac McCarthy to write a post-apocalyptic novel. According to an interview, he was inspired to write the book while traveling to El Paso with his young son.
Sitting in a hotel room late at night, he looked out the window and imagined what the town might look like in 50 years.
“I just had this image of these fires up on the hill,” he said, “and everything being laid waste, and I thought a lot about my little boy.”
For anyone with children, The Road presents a stark, disturbing view of the challenges a parent would face in a worst-case scenario. It’s hard for the reader not to draw comparisons to their own life. If resources became scare and security became a problem, how could a responsible parent care for their children?
For readers unaccustomed to Cormac McCarthy’s style, the first few chapters of The Road may come as a challenge. McCarthy is famous for his lack of punctuation, especially in long sections of dialogue.
At the onset of the book, the reader is offered little in the way of a background explanation regarding the event that destroyed the world. Instead, McCarthy chooses to plunge the reader into the dystopian world of the main character, and slowly reveal need-to-know information along the way by use of brief flashbacks.
It’s worth noting that The Road was eventually adapted to a film of the same in 2009. The movie version of the story stars Viggo Mortenson and follows the plot of the novel. However, for fans of the book, the film adaptation can’t even come close to what Mr. McCarthy achieved in the novel.
If you’re looking for a good read and you’re interested in thinking about worst-case scenarios, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better novel to mull over than The Road. Just go into it knowing that you may lose some sleep at night once you finally put the book down.
