A friend suggested I read Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” but promptly warned me that this book would probably terrify me and chill my soul.  She was right on both accounts.  There is little for me to add to the many, many articles and television segments that have been created on this book. It is a wonderful read, incredibly detailed even in its bleakness.  I felt the boy and the man were complete people and that I could at least imagine the man before whatever event burned the world to a crisp.  Don’t let the Oprah’s book club stamp turn you off– this is a dark and incredibly thought provoking book.

I found the book chilling, terrifying, and in a strange way motivating.  McCarthy never explicitly says what caused the world to die (perhaps an atom bomb, maybe an environmental event).  But I found myself thinking about how I can show more respect for the ecosystem in which I live.  George Monbiot wrote in the UK’s Guardian:

As the biosphere shrinks, McCarthy describes the collapse of the protagonist’s core beliefs. I sense that this might be happening already: that a hardening of interests, a shutting down of concern, is taking place among the people of the rich world. If this is true, we do not need to wait for the forests to burn or food supplies to shrivel before we decide that civilisation is in trouble.

I’m still trying to proess this book, but I enjoyed it– even if it did chill me to my core.  Perhaps I enjoyed it because it did chill me and force me to think about my own actions.