The Road

I've finished Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". I read so much science fiction in my youth that the barren post-apocalyptic landscape in which is set seemed almost cliched. At its heart the story is a fable about a father and a son and their love and sacrifice in a wicked world; think Life is Beautiful refracted through A Boy and His Dog.

Reviews always comment 0n the spareness of the prose. I think that this is because someone shook the typescript until every quotation mark and about one apostrophe in two fell out, leaving us with dialogue along the lines of:

Are you talking now?
Yes.
But you're not using quotation marks?
No.
Or apostrophes in negative contractions?
I wont use them ever.
But we'll use them elsewhere.
I'll always do that.
Do you want to die?
Yes.

Prodnose: Not exactly a barrel of laughs then?
Myself: This is a shocking and brilliant work, at once terribly pertinent and impressively universal. (I wonder what I mean by that?)