The Road by Cormac McCarthy
This book is the story of a nameless father and son and their dangerous trek south though a post-nuclear-holocaust America. It’s the most darkly compelling thing I’ve read since last summer’s A Million Little Pieces. The Roadis incredibly dark, McCarthy’s poetic language is amazing, and it won the Pulitzer. Here’s the Ron Charles review from The Washington Post.
One of the books I designed has been chosen as our common book at Pellissippi, so I re-read it this summer. Sharpshooter is about a 13-year old boy from East Tennessee from a family of Unionists who ends up fighting for the Confederacy for most of the war, and spends most of the rest of his life trying to cme to terms with his experiences.
I also re-read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn this summer. Every time I open this ground-breaking American novel, I’m struck by the way Twain captures the language of America, and by the relationship between Huck and Jim. There are few novels where a character declares that he will “go to hell” for a friend and it comes off as both sincere and humorous. It’s also an incredibly funny book.
