The Road
Cormac McCarthy (Picador , 2006)

June’s choice turned out to be a frightening and gloomy picture of post-global warming. It describes the arduous journey of a father and his young son, both unnamed, through the ruins of the USA, heading for the coast. At first, I found it uninteresting, even tedious. With no real plot, it raised no excitement or emotional response. Some novels do take me a while to get a feel for them – this one took about half the book! Gradually, though, I began to feel a certain empathy and my interest in the characters’ progress and the eventual outcome of the story grew.

How I was affected by the novel is, as always, based on my own opinions; those are all I can present. My reviews are not intended to put forward other people’s impressions. The only way to tell whether you like a book is to read it yourself. If you then think my opinions are rubbish, they’re not, just as yours aren’t – we simply differ.

In the case of The Road, it obviously made quite an impact; after all, it won a Pulitzer Prize and was made into a major film. I just found it wasn’t for me. I can see the appeal of the subject matter and the trials of the father and son, the story was well thought out and written. I was touched by their plight and moved by the ending; I suppose that, overall, I simply found it too bleak to appreciate, but that, of course, is no reflection on the author’s ability.