The Road by Cormack McCarthy
The Road is a detailed account of the struggles a father and son endure while trying to survive a world wide catastrophe. The book, like most of McCarthy's books, has enough descriptive detail to make every description vivid, but not overbearing and boring.
It also deftly handles the running themes in McCarthy's books of death, determinism, fate and hope. Usually that hope is crushed by one of former themes, and I may be mistaken in calling it fate, in my subjective opinion, all his books revolve around a hard determinism that pulls the characters in inevitable directions, yet is not fatalistic.
Overall, it almost deserve two readings. The first time for the plot, which is fairly short, but there is enough drama and action to push the story forward in a way that outpaces the descriptive elements. So, it is almost worth a second reading just to fully absorb McCarthy's ability to beautifully illustrate a scene, even a terrible one, with great skill.
