THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy

A movie version of this book was released late last year. I didn't see it. But I'm having trouble imagining how the plot of this book would have fulfilled the average audience's appetite for action, unless the film differed markedly from the novel.
Don't get me wrong; I liked the book. It's about a post-apocalyptic world where a father and son struggle desperately to stay alive until they can reach the south, though it's never made completely clear how that will solve their problems. Presumably, the nuclear winter will be a little less frigid there. Along the way, they try to evade "bad guys," (that's actually what the father calls them) who attempt to steal their food, and are not above resorting to cannibalism if there is no food to be stolen. The father carries a gun with him that only has one bullet left, not enough to stop an attack, but enough for either him or his son to "escape" this hell-hole of a world, if circumstances require it.
McCarthy manages to create a believable bond between the two main characters as they desperately cling to each other in a world that doesn't seem to offer much hope. This bond, more than anything else, is the main attraction of the novel, which is, perhaps surprisingly, able to maintain the reader's interest, even while using the word "gray" more often than a Syracuse weather forecast.
Besides being well-written, the book has a couple of other attractive features: it's broken into short sections, the print is big, and it has lots of dialog. If I ever write a book, I think I'll call it Short Chapters and Big Print. I bet it would be a smash! For now though, you can just pick up a copy of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. READ IT! or don't

--Mr. Sullivan