LITERATURE: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I couldn't help it this time, I think. What between work and editing The Greats, and trying to eke out some form of social existence along the way, the reviews have gone sadly by the wayside.

But a new resolution is to post much more regularly.

Starting...now.

So let's take a look at a book I polished off today, home sick from work with a migraine. Cormac McCarthy's The Road isn't exactly what most people might pick up for some light reading. On the one hand, it was, I thought, pretty disturbing and had some moderately horrifying and extremely violent details.

Case in point: the body of a headless infant being roasted on a spit over a fire.

I couldn't even type that without feeling my flesh crawl.

But this is getting off on the wrong foot. What I'm trying to say is that despite details that were graphic and explicit--both of physical and emotional turmoil--I think this book is an incredible testament to the nature of goodness and the persistence of compassion, especially that of children, even in the most excruciating circumstances.

So, starting with that lofty little affirmation, what is The Road about, exactly? Unfortunately, I'm not able to tell you, exactly. That is, the gist is that the world has been ravaged by something that caused the sun to effectively go out (or perhaps by the sun's own flares, which, biologically speaking, could, potentially, cause it to go out).It's cold. It's dark. When it snows (which is does a whole lot) it's grey. And, to add insult to post-apocalyptic injury, the few people that are left are largely a sick, almost tribal species that loots, kills, rapes, enslaves, and cannibalizes.

But amid all this, there's a nameless father and son trying to survive. The father does whatever it takes--heroic and incredibly touching--to defend and nourish his child. The boy, for his part, is only about 9 or 10, and has little to no memory of what the world used to be. Despite that, though, he still holds out hope for the goodness of humanity, and has an incredible empathy for everyone they meet that seems to transcend (or perhaps illustrate?) his age.

What I loved about the book was, undeniably, the style (even the paragraphs are blocks of text, with nary a decoration--even at the expense of apostrophes in conjunctions), and the exquisite hopelessness with which it was written. In the grand scheme of things, not a whole ton happens. They scavenege for food everywhere, they avoid and sometimes run into some really brutal people, and some really unfortunate ones, they run out of food, they make camp, etc. But the writing is so taught and airtight, so incredibly full of the expectation of something horrible, that every page turn leaves you on edge. It completely captured the world they lived in--where danger lay in wait and you had to expect the worst everywhere.

It also really got to an ugly, ugly core of humanity, and brought it, glistening in all of its pus and decay, to the forefront of the story. I think, speaking theoretically, if the world ended tomorrow for all save, perhaps, a hundred or so people in total, we would all like to think that those hundred people would find each other and build a community and start the world anew. I think we'd all expect that, to some extent, the idea that you were the last ones standing would somehow bond you together in a way that allowed you to put aside notions of power and race and greed. But McCarthy very deftly allows for a situation where those aspect of society aren't simply brushed away by disaster. Instead, they're magnified to the extent that women are kept around and impregnated constantly so that the children can be eaten. Certain groups and characters in the novel effectively turn humans into nothing more than sources of food. It's sick. It's disgusting. But as you read, part of you really wonders whether or not every one of those last hundred or so people would be able to do the "good" thing, and try to rebuild instead of take advantage and pollute. McCarthy's answer, it seems, is both yes and no. Some people would reveal the most criminal parts of themselves, while others, like the father and son, maintain their identities as "good guys."

Part of me, on reflection, thinks that that's due to the presence of the boy. There were times in the novel where it looks like the father would have killed / stolen / etc on behalf of their survival, but the boy's conscience always keeps them from doing anything that might be anything less than good. It's a beautiful notion--the overcoming of fear and starvation and the distrust of virtually all other people to arrive at a place where you do everything you can to maintain your "goodness." And so that's the running question in the boy's mind: Are we still the good guys? Are we carrying the light?

In the end, they ARE carrying the light.
And (lest I try to escape a post without indelible cheesiness), I'm holding a flame for this book.

FINAL VERDICT:
***** out of *****

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LITERATURE: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Let me start by saying that this review is probably helplessly biased. Because, in my eyes, when it comes to dystopian novels featuring women, Ms. Atwood is tops.

I mean, The Handmaid's Tale is absolutely a classic, a staple in any dystopia-lovers collection, as necessary, if you ask me, as Brave New World or 1984. It is one of those dystopias that has the society as the perfect backdrop and compliment to the real meat of the story--the individual's life. And, if we thought she'd outdone herself with the Puritanistic society in THT, she blows us (or at least me) totally away with Oryx and Crake, which I've been fervently recommending to people since I read it a few years back. It. Was. Baller.

And not only because I happen to have a fondness for science-fictiony stuff that focuses on great storytelling. The world Atwood created in Oryx and Crake was unbelievably real. Down to the very extinction of animals, and the ability to watch executions online. It was the very picture of what could really happen to our current society with a little ballooning and enough time. That's what I loved most about it--how I could really see what was going on in our society dissolving into her world of fiction based in fact. It was mesmerizing.

But then, when I heard that The Year of the Flood was coming out, I have to admit that I was totally skeptical. Despite absolutely adoring Oryx and Crake, I've seen enough bad sequels to think twice. Even good authors sometimes take a nosedive, and I really wasn't looking forward to slashing and burning what I'd loved about O and C in a sequel.

But what Atwood does (serves me right for ever doubting her!) is incredible. Both from a fiction-writing standpoint and from a series standpoint. The Year of the Flood is neither a sequel nor a prequel. It's a simultane-quel, a retelling of an already incredible story, but the retelling happens in such a way that makes it unlike anything else I've ever read. Specifically, The Year of the Flood happens not to the main characters from Oryx and Crake, but nor does it happen to completely unrelated individuals. The focus of this new novel are characters who are exactly one step removed from the people in Oryx and Crake--friends of friends, almost--which makes them perfect story-bearers who know enough of the conspiracy but who also have their own lives and own problems.

Even without reading Oryx and Crake (it's been a real while since I read it, so most of the details had faded away, sadly), The Year of the Flood still makes perfect sense and is a novel that can stand alone in its own right. And, even better (?) it offers the same kind of world-building satisfaction that Atwood accomplishes in the first novel. The facets of this new, futuristic world are developed further, and we even get to experience aspects of the society that we'd never seen before. All in all, it makes perfect sense that Atwood wrote this second novel--she obviously had more story left to tell in this incredibly developed world that she invented, and who wants to leave when they're only half-finished?

I also loved that Atwood's focus here was on two main women -- Toby and Ren, who live together in this religious commune known as the Gardeners. They are both strong characters, both real in different ways, earthy and relatable and modern all at once. They exemplify what Atwood does best in my eyes; no matter what her story or plot, she always remembers that it's characters and people that move things forward. And, no matter if it's the past of the future, people's fundamental issues and insecurities will always make them relateable. After all, we're only human.

My one fairly infinitesimal gripe (and the reason I lowered the score by half a star) was that the plot seemed sort of slow to start and get going; though the found the second half utterly tantalizing, I found the beginning of Oryx and Crake to be better, somehow, at drawing you in and keeping up the pace. Either way, fantastic read. Highly recommended.

FINAL VERDICT:
**** and 1/2 out of *****

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LITERATURE: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

I found The Lovely Bones to be, in a word, delovely. And delightful. And delicious. It was heartbreaking and beautiful, with flowing, wonderful prose and meaningful, thoughtful characters.

I don't mean to keep littering it with praise like every other review has, but it's been a while since I read something that was simultaneously a can't-put-this-down mystery / thriller / murder book, and a book that made me think profoundly about death, love, and what it means to live.

Death is always a touchy, strange sort of thing in literature. When you see it happen via murder or old age, see the burial, see the aftermath, it is always from a third-person sort of view. Once the character in question is gone, everything about them ceases; the light goes out. Their consciousness is gone.

In The Lovely Bones, that problem of discontinuity, that missing hole in the plot, is eliminated because Susie Salmon starts from and continues to speak from beyond the grave, after her rape and murder by her neighbor.

Susie is the perfect narrator; her age is ideal--she's at the prime of life, not quite a child, but not as jaded as an adult. She is on the brink of everything and here, in the worst kind of tragedy, her life is taken. I've already said it, but I'll say it again: heartbreaking. And that's not what surprised me most about a novel that I half-thought would have been an over-hyped bestseller like The Lost Symbol. It's not only the narrator that's great--it's the whole construct of the plot. The very first thing that happens is the worst one, and yet the novel is totally wrought with suspense, the whole way through. And yet the suspense doesn't get in the way of the plot, of the beautiful developments of the still-living characters--of Susie's family, her love interest, the oddball friend, Ruth.

Susie's vision of heaven, even, is simultaneously stunning and eerie, strange and lovely without being overly perfect or filled with sunshiney clouds. It reminded me a lot of the heaven in one of my favorite movies-- What Dreams May Come. And yet perhaps the most beautiful part of the whole thing is that Sebold manages to really give her not only a heaven, but also a final taste of earth, a first taste of the love, the sex, and the adulthood that Susie spends the whole novel dreaming of--all without being overthetop, or cheesy, or unbelieveable. It is the cherry on top of a well-envisioned world; it makes perfect sense. As much as I wanted to be like GAH! That's awful stupid happy ending blah blah blah, I couldn't. Because it was just right.

It fit perfectly, all the pieces together, even the way in which the family breaks and then reassembles. Some people, my friend Michelle, for instance, take some issue with it, the way the mother left and then was able to reconcile. But I thought it was more believable than if they'd all just managed to adjust. People experience horror, and then break, but then survive. And in Sebold's world, I truly believe the way in which it happens.

It's an achievement. I loved it.

FINAL VERDICT
***** out of *****

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