The Road: A

In a desolate corner of the world, one imagines that Cormac McCarthy would be in heaven. Of course, his entire body of work – from All the Pretty Horses to No Country for Old Men – is indicative of his vivid power as an empath of the dead and dying. Nowhere else this year, or perhaps in many a year, will one feel the full power of his craft as in The Road.

The story is spare and ripe with poeticism. A father and his son wander through America searching for the coast. They head to the coast for reasons unknown and the world they straggle through is unlike anything else that has been written in a long, long while. Ash flies and piles in huge drifts that cover the countryside. Nearly everyone is dead and all of the vegetation along with it. Houses and cities have been burned (and in the greatest line of the book, a couple sits sipping wine watching the collapse of civilization) and the other survivors can be hardly called such. For those that are encountered they are all hungry, desperate for even a taste of food. Their food isn't of the natural variety, unless of course you think human flesh is natural. This is a world that isn't teetering on the edge of destruction, waiting for a savior (as in Stephen King's The Stand), it has fallen down that dark deep well of Oblivion and has festered there, sprouting a Hell on Earth.

Stripped of those unnecessary functions of writing – such as dialogue quotes and proper time and place as well as "proper exposition" – McCarthy has attained the visionary power of a prophet. On every page his powerful voice, vast catastrophic vocabulary, and unassailable position as Master Stylist of Cataclysm, all add up to a supremely unshakable imagining of the World at World's End; it has exhaled its last gasp and is now merely waiting for those final moments as the light slips away. And yet in this creeping darkness, hope. It is because in a most wise decision, McCarthy turns the entire focus of his idea to spin about the relationship that exists between the man and the boy, the parent and the child. Here is where his poetic pondering makes the most sense and the most indelible impression. It is the final piece of a puzzle that when arranged, paints a picture of society that is unsettling - and thinly hopeful - in every iota.

The final scene is restrained and a tad ingratiating in its quiet musing but it may be the novel's only flaw. The sheer meteoric impact that his nightmare will make in your mind is alone worth the price of purchasing this book. Be warned though: there is madness in the corners of this writer's midnight-black world.