The recap
A father and his young son walk south through the ash-covered ruins of America, some years after an unnamed catastrophe has burned the world and dimmed the sun. The cold is deepening, food is almost gone, and the few other survivors are as likely to be predators as allies. The two push a shopping cart of scavenged supplies along the highway toward the coast, hoping the winter there will be survivable, while the boy keeps asking whether they are still the good guys. McCarthy strips the novel to its bones: no chapters, no names, spare dialogue without quotation marks, and prose that shifts between flat, exhausted description and passages of startling, almost scriptural beauty. It is a harrowing read, with moments of real terror, yet at its heart it is a tender portrait of a parent's love and a meditation on what it means to keep going, and to keep faith, when nearly everything is gone.
Why read it
For readers ready for something stark and unforgettable, and for any parent who has lain awake worrying about their child's future. It is short, but it stays with you for years.
Fun facts
- 01
It won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, McCarthy's first Pulitzer, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction.
- 02
McCarthy told Oprah Winfrey the idea came to him one night as he looked out the window of an old hotel in El Paso while his young son slept.
- 03
He dedicated the book to his son, John Francis McCarthy.
- 04
After it became an Oprah's Book Club pick in 2007, the book club paperback alone sold 1.4 million copies by 2011, compared with under 200,000 before.
- 05
John Hillcoat directed the 2009 film adaptation, with Viggo Mortensen as the father.
