Major Reviews
The New York Times: “McCarthy changes the odds to favor the man and boy, who for a decade have survived death by fire and ice, and also cannibalism, which has become the most grievous manifestation of evil’s waning days.”
Read more here: www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/books/review/Kennedy.t.html?pagewanted=all
The Guardian: “The Road is a novel of transforming power and formal risk. Abandoning gruff but profound male camaraderie, McCarthy instead sounds the limits of imaginable love and despair between a diligent father and his timid young son, ‘each other the world’s entire’. The initial experience of the novel is sobering and oppressive, its final effect is emotionally shattering.”
Read more here: www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/nov/04/featuresreviews.guardianreview4
The Washington Post: “Without its rich voice, The Road would read like a remake of ‘Night of the Living Dead.’ Indeed, as if to acknowledge that debt, the man remembers his late wife saying, ‘We're the walking dead in a horror film.’ More than once, the little boy warns his father they shouldn't go into an abandoned house, but then — no, stop! – they go in anyway.”
Read more here: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/28/AR2006092801460.html
The Boston Globe: “The man may have been a doctor in another life, but there are only hints at the world before — the boy, too, is of indeterminate age in a weatherless atmosphere that may be October. The man's consciousness, the perspective from which the novel unfolds, is caught in a daily struggle between caring and letting go. In order to survive, he has to give up on the lure of the past; in order to find a reason to survive, he has to preserve it.”
Read more here: web.archive.org/web/20080726132827/http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2006/09/24/desolation_row/
The Village Voice: “The genius of McCarthy's work, whether you find it risible or profound, is in its bold, seamless melding of private revelation, cultural insight, and unabashed philosophizing. Sci-fi divination is new for him, though, and the freshness he brings to this end-of-the-world narrative is quite stunning: It may be the saddest, most haunting book he's ever written, or that you'll ever read.”
Read more here: www.villagevoice.com/2006-08-29/books/end-of-the-line/
Related Articles
Cormac McCarthy’s interest in mathematics and science has led him to research work at the Santa Fe Institute; this article gives interpretations of The Road from some of his colleagues at the Institute.
Read it here: www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Fiction-and-Scientific-Themes-in-The-Road-by-Cormac-McCarthy/1
Although normally a very reclusive writer who doesn’t give interviews, Cormac McCarthy agreed to an interview with Oprah Winfrey, and this article gives some highlights.
Read it here: www.flakmag.com/books/cormacoprah.html
Cormac McCarthy agrees to another interview in 2009, with the Wall Street Journal this time.
Read it here: online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704576204574529703577274572.html
The following piece is the obituary of Cormac McCarthy’s first wife and mother of his older son, which gives some insight into McCarthy in his beginning years as a writer trying to make it as a novelist.
Read it here: www.legacy.com/obituaries/bakersfield/obituary.aspx?page=notice&pid=125527543
Cormac McCarthy doesn’t upgrade from a typewriter he used for 46 years to a Mac, but replaces it with the same model for $11.
Read it here: www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/cormac-mccarthys-typewriter-dies-after-50-years-and-five-million-words