elowyn karnes

March 5, 2026

So I’ve been finished with The Road by Cormac McCarthy for one whole week now. The main reason I’ve not written my “review” about it is for one reason. This is the stinkiest 2.5/5 book to exist probably ever. The worst part is that before I finished it I actually thought I was going to like it. Sure he rarely uses comas and outright never uses quotations for dialogue and the utilitarian writing style interspersed with poetic punchlines at the end of paragraphs can be jarring at times, but I’m not opposed to quirky or even weird writing styles. PIRINESE is weird in pretty much every sense of the word but that has become one of my favorite books of all time. So what happened to drop a potential 4/5 or possible 5/5 book to a stinky 2.5? It’s a layered answer but the biggest disappointment of this book is its ending. I knew from a mile away that it was going for something artsy and poetic and I was actually excited to see what it was going to do with it. Instead it just ends and McCarthy decides to wax poetic for the final paragraph. And I know somewhere some English major is going to disagree with this statement but after hearing praise for all of his other works this just felt like a big “I’m not mad just disappointed” moment. And I can’t explain all of what irritates me about the ending without talking about the whole story and I just don’t think it deserves the time it would take to do that. Like I’m all for leaving things to interpretation. I’m actually a fan of the fact that we are never told what sent the world into the post apocalyptic state it is in during the book. It’s implied it’s some kind of nuclear war of asteroid impact or some other cataclysm that leaves the world coated in ash but the origin is never explained because it doesn’t need to be. I also like the “carrying the fire” idea that kept coming up as a motivation for surviving another day. I also liked that when the child asked his father if there are other good guys besides them and when his father says there are the child responds by asking why they haven’t found any yet. Because when you must do anything it takes to survive, even compromising your morals, the concept of good and evil becomes blurred and soon the question of “where are the good guys?” Or even “are we still the good guys?” Becomes more complicated and nuanced and isn’t one you have time to contemplate during an apocalypse. You don’t have time to figure out if someone is good or bad because by the time you find out you are either dead or robbed of all your belongings. Mercy and good faith do not exist in the apocalypse. So obviously I liked a good portion of the book and a large reason I delayed writing anything about it is because I wanted to sit with it to see if my thoughts changed. Maybe I just didn’t get it, maybe I’m the stupid dumb idiot and the English major is right. But my mind hasn’t changed and probably won’t. If any of this sounds interesting to you then give the book a try. Hell you can have my copy. Maybe you’ll like it more than I did. I’ll add a picture of two pages from the middle of the book to give you an idea of what reading this book is like.

I’m currently halfway through Howling Dark. Which is book 2 of The Sun Eater series and am really enjoying it so that will probably be finished sometime next week probably.

Anyway The Road gets a stinky 2.5/5