Week 2- Apocalyptic Landscapes and Facial Injuries

Two and a half weeks in and it's confirmed....I'm not going to get through my books in a month so I'm switching to the three month option. Instead of blaming the book, this week the blame lies securely with my being a clumsy fool and landing myself with facial injuries. Let's just say falling head first into a concrete footpath isn't wise and leads to a massive black eye which leads to:

• Having to wear sunglasses in public and therefore being unable to read on the bus
• Having dry eyes and therefore being too tired to read at night

When I got to it, Cormac McCarthy's The Road only took about two days to finish.

I've never read anything by McCarthy before and had heard so much positive that I was prepared for The Road not to live up to the hype. For those living under a literary rock (and I guess a cinematic one too- not that I've seen the film), The Road is harrowing tale of an unnamed man and his son travelling through a burnt post-apocalyptic United States. It details their quest to escape the rapidly approaching bitter winter; to find the bare essentials of life such as food and clothes; and to avoid what the boy terms "the bad guys" who represent the majority of the living humanity that has descended cannibalism in order to survive. Largely it is a story of survival with very little action and when the horror of the hell in which they are living creeps in there is a feeling of inevitability about it.

OK Cormac I take it back- hype schmype! This is without question and all hyperbole aside one of finest works of fiction ever written. From the third sentence I was hooked and were it not for the facial injuries I wouldn't have put it down. The language is sparse but beautiful, and is masterfully presented. You can see the bleak landscape and almost taste the ash. There may not be much in the way of action and as mentioned above it does have an aura of inevitability but the relationship between the man and the boy is so honest, so real and so raw that you feel immensely for them both. When it comes down to it, there actually aren't words to tell you just how profoundly wonderful this book is except to say READ IT!

Brilliant book- I like this cover much better than the movie-tie of my copy

Next was to be The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami but I finished The Road at my parents' place and don't have it on me. That means borrowing a book from them and therefore adding a new book to the list as my parents own none of the rest of the list. The new entry is When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson. This one really could go either way as it is the third in a series and I haven't read the first two (my mother assures me it stands on its own), and I have a seriously love/hate relationship with Kate Atkinson (I think her writing funny and of a good calibre but I hate her obsession with doing an epilogue "and then 10 years later" chapter- it killed Emotionally Weird for me which otherwise I'd completely loved).

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