Brief book review: Cormac McCarthy's The Road

Last weekend, I took it upon myself to read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Having read it, I can't understand what all the fuss is about. Also, it was apparently an influence on Fallout 3, and that influence is responsible for all the stupidity I complained about in my game review.

Basically, the Road is a rip-off of JG Ballard's early sci-fi novels, most notably Drought. The novel is startlingly similar to Ballard's stuff, but with the imporant difference that it's stylistically decisively inferior. McCarthy writes a very simple, down-to-earth style, which he occasionally interrupts with ridiculous flights of purple prose. The impression is occasionally very jarring. Overall, the writing and plot is captivating enough that it keeps you reading, but the purple prose is sometimes so awful it reminds me of Andy Remic. Seriously.

I didn't think the book really had any theme or message. Of course, I could be wrong. From the Wikipedia article:

British environmental campaigner George Monbiot was so impressed by The Road that he declared McCarthy to be one of the "50 people who could save the planet" in an article published in January 2008. Monbiot wrote, "It could be the most important environmental book ever. It is a thought experiment that imagines a world without a biosphere, and shows that everything we value depends on the ecosystem."

Oh, for crying out loud. You needed a novel to tell you that we would find it hard to live without any plants or animals at all? That, though, really is the sum total of the environmental message of the Road.

On a Fallout note, this is apparently the reason there isn't any vegetation in the Capital Wasteland in Fallout 3. Having read the book, I now understand that the makers of Fallout 3 were trying real hard to give the game a "Road" vibe. I wish they hadn't, frankly.

To rant for a moment, I feel like these days, entertainment and art only comes in one of two varieties. Either it has no theme at all, no message, nothing to say about anything, or it has a single message that it bludgeons you senseless with.

The Road is firmly in the first camp. I didn't think it had any meaningful theme. Overall, it's captivating enough to make you read it through, but it's short enough that that isn't any challenge. It's a forgettable, mediocre novel. I can't for the life of me understand why it won awards.

Verdict: don't bother. Read J.G. Ballard's Drought or Drowned World instead.