25th February 2010
Divided opinions about 'The Road'. Most people really liked it, whilst a couple had mixed feelings and Rob hated it. There was one point upon which there was complete agreement, that it was an extremely depressing book to read, though Mark T. emphasised that he found it enjoyable to be so depressed by it (we should all be worried for him).
I can't recall a great deal of the discussion to report on - it felt a strangely subdued meeting (caused by the book content or as one person noted 'most of us looked and sounded really tired'. We should stop working so hard) and people drifted off home much earlier than usual. The other possible explanation of course being that we were missing the garrulous Neil and Richard.
General appreciation of the writing style with most people thinking his use of descriptive language was highly enjoyable - the exception being me (and to an extent Richard in his email) who felt he was using adjectives and adverbs out of context and without any possible meaning
General feeling that he built the tension up really well and that it was a gripping, easily read novel - exception was me (spotting a theme yet?) who felt no tension at all
Ras (and possibly others) felt it pulled on feelings as a father. I thought he was such a pathetic figure I couldn't relate to him or his relationship with his son
General view that the book left too much unexplained (such as why the destruction had happened, how the pair of them had got to that stage without the son appearing to have any 'nous' etc) and that this detracted from the integrity of the book - Mark disagreed with that one (yay, not me) feeling that the emotions, relationships and moral tale were what mattered rather than the context
Some discussion about how mankind does have the potential to behave in that kind of a way (i.e. mostly evil and looking out for themselves) when it feels threatened
A general view that this was not as good as the previous McCarthy we read (All the Pretty Horses), perhaps because he had not focused in on a theme that he really knew and felt at home with.
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