The Road by Cormac McCarthy

A father-son, post-holocaust road trip story. I know that McCarthy is our current literary big boy in the U.S., and by virtue of other works (All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, Blood Meridian ...) he deserves that distinction. But as to The Road -- well, I've read better father-son stories*, I've read better post-holocaust stories**, and I've read better road trip stories***. On the up side, The Road won't take up much of your reading time. The book is slim; the language and sentence structure are, uncharacteristic for McCarthy, spare.

That said, I also admit to not really knowing a great deal about McCarthy and his work, and I admit to needing to have a conversation with somebody about this book.

* Faulkner's "Barn Burning"
** Harlan Ellison's "A Boy and His Dog", Neville Shute's On the Beach
*** Jack Kerouac's On the Road