• Author: Cormac McCarthy
• Publisher: Picador Books / Pan McMillan
• Publishing year: 2006
• Pages: 310
• ISBN: 978-0330448628

https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/cormac-mccarthy/the-road/9781035003792

Review:

Ravenous

A man and his son, a little boy, are on the road through an apocalyptic world. Some kind of disaster has occurred that killed off most humans and those that are still alive have to fight to survive, especially for food. Pushing a cart with all their belongings both cross this dead world, a burned up United States. There’s not only the danger of starvation, as all plant and animal life has gone, but also other survivors that have resorted to cannibalism and would do anything to get their hands on a little defenseless boy. With danger lurking at every corner the both of them have to rely on themselves to get through.

As reader we don’t know exactly what has happened, whether it was a nuclear war or a climate disaster, Cormac McCarthy left this out of the story. But in itself, this part of the story is not the important part. The entire story really is about the survival and the relation between the two main characters, the father and the son.

I do have some mixed feelings about the writing because most of the time the characters felt very two-dimensional and not a lot happens, apart from them being on the road, looking for food or hiding from some possible bad folks. Only in the third act the story picked up pace a little bit but the ending disappointed me because I needed a more ambiguous ending… I do recall thinking during the entire novel if the man and the boy were truly father and son or if this was just a way they saw each other because they were the only ones who they could rely on.

As I said, I had mixed feelings but mostly I was very invested in the relationship between the two main characters and the world McCarthy has built, one where food is scarce and people are in complete survival mode. It begs the question how far you would go yourself when you were in this kind of situation.

I immediately read the graphic novel based on the book. A little review below:

The Road: Graphic Novel

• Author: Cormac McCarthy
• Illustrator: Manu Larcenet
• Publisher: Dargaud / Abrams Comicarts
• Publishing year: 2024
• Pages: 160
• ISBN: 978-1419776779

Review:

Raw and Dark

As for the story of this graphic novel, see above.

As for the way Manu Larcenet brought to live the story and adapted it into this graphic novel:

Manu Larcenet wrote a letter to Cormac McCarthy wherein he asked permission to adapt the raw and dark post-apocalyptic story into a graphic novel wherein Manu could show the world McCarthy described. Larcenet succeeded in truly giving a very bleak world, by bringing it in black and white with a little sepia color mixed in there. He brought to live the story that McCarthy wrote (and left the ending a little more ambiguous than McCarthy himself did) and added his own stunning visuals.

The world Larcenet has drawn is darker than any post-apocalyptic graphic novel I have read so far (and I have read a few series like the Walking Dead, The Stand and Crossed). In my opinion this graphic novel enhanced the story of McCarthy and made it even scarier than the source novel.

I plannend on watching the movie adaptation with Viggo Mortensen, Guy Pearce and Robert Duvall after reading the novel and the graphic novel but my bluray didn’t work anymore. Pity because I remember it was a great movie (saw it years ago before reading the novel now)