She’s My Dad by Iolanthe Woulff

She’s My Dad
Iolanthe Woulff
Outskirts Press (Nov 13, 2009)
6 x 9 Paperback cream, 469 pages
6 x 9 Hardback w/ jacket, 469 pages
ISBN13: 9781432743772
Fiction

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What if rumoured statistics on the internet were true, that the ratio of gay people to heterosexuals is somewhere between 20% (1 in 5) and 33% (1 in 3) of the population? Now, suspend your disbelief and imagine that you can tap into the thoughts and see the private actions of everyone in your world: gays, straights, lovers and haters. Wouldn’t the experience mimic a world where everyone says what’s really on their minds, and everyone does what they really want to do? Personally, I think the result would be a world larger than life in practically every way; it would be the fictional world portrayed in the novel She’s My Dad by Iolanthe Woulff.

Nicholas “Collie” Skinner is the bastard son of a man who is now a woman—Nickie Farrell, the end result of a top-notch sex change program. Neither of them are aware of the connection. Collie’s mother has hidden the truth from both. Which is probably a good thing. Collie supports his drunkard, abusive father (who’s a detailed caricature of the white, racist good-old-boy) and his dying mother, Luanne. Due to his environment Collie struggles with prejudicial tendencies learned from the father he hates. Fortunately, he’s not alone: Collie has fallen hard for Robin, who’s a supportive, loving, church-going friend of his mother’s. The two women want Collie to learn how not to hate. Their message is clear: “Don’t hate, Nicholas. Hate destroys everything. Don’t let it destroy you…” Collie also hates his brother, who’s back in town. Unknown to the family the brother is a homosexual in denial, who, with his wealthy partner, spends his time tracking down and beating up gays (men or women). Then there’s Collie’s sister who, rather than trying to live as a lesbian, hung herself. Quite a family to come from and still hope to be “normal,” isn’t it? And can you imagine what might happen when Collie learns that his biological father is transexual?

Let’s also throw in a crazed, racist billionaire who intends his last act to be the total destruction of the local university, which was founded with a mandate to grow as a tolerant, liberal and forward-thinking haven for learning. The place represents every person and thing he has hated all his life.

Then there’s the self-proclaimed dyke, Cinda, who aspires to be an investigative reporter. She’s very smart and such a narcissist she can’t imagine the damage she does when revealing that her English teacher, Nickie Farrell, is a T-girl (a man-made woman rather than a biological one).

Each of the people mentioned in this story (and there are more) are balanced or challenged by their opposites. For example: jaded Cinda rooms with a rich, beautiful, innocent, Barbie-like, positive thinker who is completely comfortable with Cinda being gay.  Luanne has her pastor and her love child, Collie, to help counter the nightmare of her marriage. And so on…

If you toned down the over-the-top characters, Woulff’s book would resemble some of the old drama standards like Hotel, Wheels, Airport or Chiefs (updated for the times, of course). It’s a big, sprawling book filled with suspense and interesting people. On this level, She’s My Dad is a fun book to read. But something deeper happens when you look closer at the larger than life characters. You’ll find yourself thinking: “I know someone just like that.” or “I wish I could just let go and say what’s on my mind.” or “Could there really be this much hatred in the real world?” and “Is it possible that I’m part of the problem?”

Such questions and statements would suggest that She’s My Dad is, in part, about hatred and intolerance and the possibility of redeeming change. Hatred and intolerance tends to destroy both the victim and the hater. But being tolerant of people who are different from us doesn’t mean much if we turn a blind eye toward all the prejudice and hatred these people face. In reality, it make us part of the problem. More change is required of us.

She’s My Dad deals with this last issue as well… We see something of what it is to be gay, to be straight and have to deal with people who are gay, to be so evil as to revel in your hatred of people who are different, to be so good as to consistently support others with your love while also fighting evil face to face, to hide or flaunt who you are because it’s the only way you know how to survive and, most important, how opportunities always exit for change.

I think the way I would summarize the book is that She’s My Dad is about learning that all forms of hate and all forms of love are a choice, whether those choices are as difficult as learning to accept and love who you really are or as simple as insisting that an old black man retains his position in a line in your local grocery store.

Love, hatred and redemption. She’s My Dad is a book we could all benefit from reading.

Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2010


Note: One improvement that could have made the book even better than it is would be making certain that all characters think and talk as per their education. There were a number of slips in this regard. High School educated people sometimes used words I had to look up in the dictionary. The errors pulled me out of the story a few times.

Who Got Liz Gardner by Elizabeth Allen

Who Got Liz Gardner
by Elizabeth Allen
YouWriteOn.com, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-84923-888-5
Trade Paperback
355 pages
Fiction

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Liz Gardner wanders into a chat room for members of her 1977 graduating high school class. She’s a financial advisor looking for prospective customers. Instead, what she finds is a discussion between a group of men trying to answer the question “Who got Liz Gardner?” And so begins a trip through Liz’s mind, not so much looking for the answer to the group’s question, but answering, for herself, the question “How did I get Liz Gardner?”

You just know this trip into the past is going to be interesting: Liz says at the outset, “My stories require no embellishing. I didn’t conform to social ideals, pressure or expectations. I drove through my life without a safety-belt, miraculously surviving my reckless choices.”

Having grown up during the same era as Liz, I expected a story of rebellion against authority, drug experimentation and plenty of sex. We were part of the “do what feels good.” generation. But Who Got Liz Gardner is so much more.

Reading like an autobiography, we first see Liz as a victim of a broken home: unloving father, self-centred mother and a young woman determined not to repeat her parents’ mistakes. Instead, Liz makes up her own rules to live by (a lot of us did that). She’s not interested in drugs. But sex is fun, driven by her, not the man. Monogamy isn’t necessary, but you better make that clear up front: Having a father who was a serial cheater, Liz doesn’t put up with liars. She isn’t perfect and doesn’t expect her men to be. Yet Liz is looking for someone, a person she hasn’t even defined in her own mind.

An aspiring actress in New York, Liz’s life is busy, messy and full of some really odd men. In fact, one of them, to whom she is technically engaged, is uncomfortably weird. He eventually becomes the deciding factor in her decision to move to Los Angeles. Happy with her new acting school and the choice of men available within that group, Liz continues living as before. But when she becomes disillusioned with the type of man she keeps returning to, and her former fiancé turns into a stalker, Liz begins her transformation. A new age retreat takes her even further. She comes out of the experience ready to become the person she needs to be for the special someone she can feel coming her way.

And she’s right. It isn’t long before Liz finds her mate: Eric Allen.

Okay, you’ve got the basic outline of the book. Why should you read it? Liz Allen tells it like it is (or was). Sex is natural, described in terms we actually used in those times, and is often funny and clumsy, the author not following the current trend of erotic romance, where everything is perfect, spelled out for you and which often crosses the line into pornography. Even when her life is falling apart, Liz is aggressive; she’s never afraid of making choices. While she may worry, Liz always seems to have a core that can turn anything around, usually in a non-typical, “I won’t run away from life manner.” Oh, there’s also the fact that even when Liz is talking dirty, behaving without regard to what may happen after the current orgasm, she’s charming, larger than life and great fun to read about.

Who Got Liz Gardner is not a book for your teenager. I wouldn’t even recommend it for those of you who prefer sex with the lights off—the book will startle and offend you. Yet it comes off in such an honest, unpretentious and entertaining way, that you, my readers, should buy a copy today!

Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2010

Solar by Ian McEwan

Solar
By Ian McEwan
Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-39924-3
Hard Cover
285 pages
Fiction/Satire

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Solar. My initial thought is “Don’t expect a literary review with comparisons to Ian McEwan’s other critically acclaimed works.” First, I haven’t read any of them, and, second, a book like Solar can be over-thought. You see, McEwan has written a dark, satirical novel about the problem of Global Warming/Climate Change as seen through the eyes of just one person. And while there’s plenty of fodder for a highbrow criticism, I prefer to focus on the story as entertainment, rather than a lofty piece of literature.

Michael Beard is an aging, bald, overweight, narcissistic, Nobel prize-winning physicist who has spent most of his adult life trading in on his one accomplishment. Corporations want him on their boards, scientific institutions want his name on their letterheads, he’s in demand on the lecture circuit and the government has literally thrown money at him to make quick advancements in the field of global warming. This is a man who has had the opportunity to be great. Instead, he is a slave to his wants: food, drink, dalliances, comfort and any short-term goal that captures his fancy. One could argue Michael Beard represents the excesses of the very problem he’s attempting to solve: as he wantonly cuts a swath through his life without thinking of the consequences, one automatically thinks of mankind’s rapacious consumption of Earth’s bounty. Thus, we are, or should be, prepared for his brilliant work in photosynthesis to blow up in his face—just as his life and reputation will be ruined when his shortsightedness catches up with him.

Solar is a sluggish read. The story spans a period of 9 years, all seen through the eyes of an unlikeable person. We are forced to sit inside his abused body and inward looking mind. Clench your fists as he breaks the hearts of a string of beautiful and caring women—because he doesn’t know how to love and doesn’t care to learn. Pound your table with those fists as his narcissism single handedly destroys his greatest accomplishment, and at the very end leaves him with nothing but the love of a child and, to his very great surprise, his love for her.

Interesting as an inside look at the world of scientific research and as a study of a despicable protagonist, Solar is not your typical Sunday afternoon read.

Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye.

THE SHADOW OF THE WOLF by Sam Cross

THE SHADOW OF THE WOLF
by Sam Cross

Eternal Press, 2010
eBook ISBN: 978-1-77065-067-1
Print ISBN: 978-1-77065-068-8
366 Pages
eBook
Thriller

Reviewer: Clayton Bye
http://www.claytonbye.com
Alternative-Read.com

An unnamed city (maybe yours) is in the grip of a serial killer the media has dubbed The Wolf.
His victims are young, beautiful women who he takes without leaving clues and who are never seen again. He’s bold! His last victim was in a car pile-up on a main highway; The Wolf took her from her demolished vehicle without being seen. The police are at their wit’s end.

Enter professor Richard Rosenwood, a criminal psychologist who teaches at the local university. The police have asked him for any insights or clues he might turn up by going through the case files. Add in a gorgeous psychology student who is openly interested in the professor, a hooker/thief /compulsive liar who is the only person to ever survive an attack by The Wolf, a couple of sharp detectives and a killer who’s way of disposing of bodies is so horrendous as to be unimaginable and you’ve got yourself an interesting book in the making.

The Shadow of The Wolf is full of interesting characters and many plot twists, but it is also well thought out and written. There’s so much going on, I keep wanting to tell you more. But that would spoil the book for you. Here are a few hint’s to guide you: the professor’s lectures are about real-life serial killers; The Wolf is an appropriate name for the serial killer for several interesting reasons; but most of all, pay close attention to the title of this book and what it might mean (or the number of meanings it may have).

Sam Cross is a pen name for an author with many novels under his belt, and it shows: not a misspelled word, his sentences constantly push you forward—there are no slow spots here; and while I had the story figured out by the time I was a third of a way through the novel, it turns out I was wrong, then wrong again, then wrong again… You see where I’m going with this?

The Shadow of The Wolf is a somewhat unusual, character driven thriller I thoroughly enjoyed. It was time well spent.

Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye

Alien Dreams by John B. Rosenman

Alien Dreams
John B. Rosenman
Drollerie Press
ISBN: 978-0-9798081-4-2
2007 for eBook/2009 for Print
356 pages/274 pages
Science Fiction

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Captain Eric Latimore leads two husband and wife teams to the planet Lagos to investigate the disappearance of the previous company crew of six. It doesn’t take long to discover what happened to the first crew and what may also become the current team’s fate. Aliens of such beauty that one immediately recognizes them as angels invade the dreams of anyone who lands on the planet. These dreams are so real the beauty represented by the angels eventually causes the dreamer to go insane. One crew member actually digs out her eyes because the angels are just too beautiful to look at.

The team also learns that the angels are imprisoned on Lagos in high-tech/magical cubes one can carry in hand or pocket. And while the aliens are physically restrained, they still command an incredible and influential power over visitors to the planet.

As the investigation progresses the angels manage to influence a crew member to render all means of transport off the planet inoperable, to cause the death of one of the crew and to badly injure Eric’s wife. And now comes the punch-line. The angels believe an ancient prophecy that says a stranger will lead them to freedom and provide the means for them to exact revenge from their captor (a mysterious creature known only as the Gatekeeper). They have been trying to convince Eric that he is the One—with little success. But now, in return for healing the two women and promising safe passage off  Lagos for them (and a second type of alien victim), Eric must agree to become one of the angels, sire their Redeemer and lead them all to a showdown with the Gatekeeper.

Eric feels he has no moral choice but to agree. Then things get interesting at light speed. The more Eric becomes an angel, the more he realizes they are empty, petulant, bored killers who look upon what they consider to be inferior races as their playing and killing grounds. One wonders if they even have a soul. Yet Eric knows, one way or another, he is going to be the one to fight the Gatekeeper on behalf of these aliens. So, he keeps looking for redeeming virtues in the angels, for something he can touch and nurture, that they might eventually be taught a different way of living, a different path—to earn redemption rather than taking it by force.

It’s not until tragedy strikes the very core of the angels that Eric sees his chance. But to accomplish what he envisions Eric must defeat a creature who might well be the God of the Old Testament.

With a strong science fiction setting, John B. Rosenman explores the importance of culture, compassion and love by pitting a race that has none of these qualities against a number of species.

Alien Dreams is, in my opinion, John Rosenman’s most substantial offering to date. One could say that he shows us what it is to be human by slowly tearing everything that means away from Captain Eric Latimore, all the while holding up the angels as examples of the horror of what he is to become.

Yet another enjoyable read from an author who knows how to entertain and make you think. Well done John.

Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye

Fifth Sun: The Awakening

Fifth Sun: The Awakening
Hilary McLean
Iuniverse, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-595-47871-2
Trade paperback
330 pages
Dark Fantasy

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“Fifth Sun: The Awakening uses the Mayan [2012, end of time] prophecy as a backdrop because it is a classic story of Light and Dark, Chaos and Creation. Humanity enjoys stories with heroes and villains, action and adventure. It is fun to imagine that all of life is in the hands of a reluctant hero who chooses hope over despair in the face of overwhelming odds; a parable for each of us in our life’s journey.”
—Hilary McLean

Sarah Riggs arrived in the tourist town of Jasper, Alberta as a teenager with no memories of her past. In time she built a family there: her husband, Hal, who works as a warden for Jasper National Park; her children, 3 year-old Alex and 5 year-old Andy (Andromeda) and their comfortable home in the lovely mountain town. But Sarah’s past has caught up with her, and it doesn’t care that she’s forgotten who she is.

When her children begin to show strong psychic abilities, “he of many names” begins to appear before them all in dreams that are not dreams. He knows Sarah is his opposite: he’s Chaos and she’s Creation; he has the power to end the world, she has the power to remake it. Old legends say that there have been 4 previous suns where the world was remade. It is told that in the final battle for the last or 5th sun, should Chaos prevail, then the world will end forever. With his opponent unaware of her tremendous powers, Chaos finally sees an end to thousands of years of similar conflict.

Weaving a tale with several story lines, Hilary McLean convincingly follows the terrifying awakening of Sarah as guardian of the world and all its powers. In one scene Sarah accidentally flattens Mexico city and kills millions of people. This incident falls under the mantle of  “remaking of the world,” and leaves you wondering if there’s much difference between Chaos and Creation. McLean also sets up the beginning of world chaos as “Mr. Silver” (guess who) manages to take control of a secret branch of CSIS, Canada’s version of the FBI and CIA. First order of business? The destruction of Cold Lake, Alberta: Canada’s largest air force base.

The Awakening sees Sarah split off from her two children—her husband separated from them all. As each of them moves toward reunion, they must face unbelievable dangers, events, people and things; find out who they are and what their role in this nightmare is; and they must above all avoid the dreams that are not dreams… If they are to stay alive.

Hilary McLean’s Fifth Sun: The Awakening is an interesting story of cataclysmic times caused by people who are but vessels of earth shattering powers, the humans who try to support them as best they can and the immortal King of Lies. Quite an epic and difficult first novel to write. Which brings me to my criticisms. The opening was too loose for the number of ideas and plot lines being tossed out. I found it confusing and had to reread it before attempting the review. The middle and end of the book moved well, entertained and intrigued. The confusion dropped away as the author hung more meat on the skeletons which make up the book. On the other hand, her commitment to describing Creation and Chaos using endless descriptions of light and darkness, with a showing of elementals such as earth, water, wind and fire, made it difficult to arrive at firm mental pictures of what was going on.

In my opinion, if Hilary McLean set out to keep the reader in the same kind of nail-biting confusion her characters face until all is made clear at the end of the book, then she achieved her goal admirably. If not, she should recognize just how important it is to find the professional editing help you need when self-publishing.


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye

Harm’s Way by Sam Cross

HARM’S WAY
Sam Cross
Whiskey Creek Press, 2010
eBook ISBN: 978-1-60313-745-4
Print ISBN: 978-1-60313-746-1
328 Pages
eBook
Thriller/Romance

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Clare Boyd is a successful businesswoman whose world is built on a foundation of glass. When her husband, whom she loved dearly, convinced her to carry an accidental pregnancy to term, Clare divorced him a week after the baby was born. A late night with the ultimate client ends with him missing and Clare outside, in a park, in the arms of a statue of an angel, with no memory of the evening. Instead of going to the police, Clare goes manic, trying to cover up her involvement. And then there are the dreams, which turn out to be a reality Clare is not prepared to face.

But face it she will, because someone is carefully pulling back the layers of Clare’s past. This is someone who’s willing to harm everyone who gets in his way—as long as it brings Clare closer to the future he envisions for her.

Harm’s Way, an appropriate title, takes us through the meltdown of a top corporate executive who is poised to take the reigns of the entire company. How can an individual like this unravel in just a few days? Sam Cross shows us, in detail.

This romantic thriller is crisp, professional and character driven. Ross is obviously at home with the genre(s), and I’m sure his fans will love Harm’s Way. For my part, I found this 328 page novel just zipped right on by, which, in my world, means the author did exactly what he’s supposed to do: he drew me in, suspended my disbelief, connected me with his protagonist and kept the tension high enough for me to keep turning those pages.

I did have a couple of concerns.

First, Cross revealed his antagonist/evil doer about half way through the book. He even took us back through scenes we had already seen through Clare’s eyes. Risky business, that. He could have lost me right there. In fact, I found myself saying “What the hell?” You see, by making the choice he did, Cross diluted a great deal of the suspense he had worked so hard to build. And I didn’t understand it. But… Harm’s Way is not a novel of suspense; it’s a thriller. So, believe me when I tell you the author’s seemingly unorthodox choice pays off: there are many more thrills to come, some plot twists you won’t expect and a pace that never lets up.

Second, there’s the questions: Would a seasoned trench fighter like Clare melt down as quickly as she did? Do her actions resonate with who she’s supposed to be? If one follows very closely, Cross answers these questions (in a way) early on in the story. Clare divorced her husband and walked away from her one week old daughter. What would make someone do that? The answer explains Clare’s behaviour throughout the book.

My problem is, I’m not sure, even with Clare’s history, that a mother would walk out on her baby and a husband she loves and who loves her. So, I didn’t quite buy the answer Cross gives the reader. What this means for me as a reviewer is that I would probably give this book a 4 out 5 rather than the perfect 5 (if I used such a scale). However, I’d rather put it this way: just because I have a few issues with Harm’s Way that diminished my enjoyment, doesn’t mean you will. Sam Cross has given his readers a terrific thriller!


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest
Stieg Larsson
Penguin Group Canada, 2010
ISBN 978-0-670-06903-3
Hardcover
563 pages
fiction/thriller/crime

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Well, it’s done and on the shelves; Stieg Larrson’s last book in a trilogy about a government-generated psychopath who decides she isn’t going to be a victim anymore. Lisbeth Salander is slim, short, boyish, bisexual and can hold her own, physically, against anyone. She also has a photographic memory and is one of the top computer hackers in the world. Living by her own moral code and violently rejecting anyone who tries to make her conform, Lisbeth manages to steal billions of Kroner from a crook, begins living as she wishes and even collects a few friends along the way. However, after tracking down her evil father (who is responsible for virtually everything that’s wrong with her and her life), he and her serial killer brother shoot her in the head and bury her alive, she, of course, digs her way out and almost finishes them off. This brings us to the end of the first two novels.

As the third book begins: Salander is in the hospital awaiting 16 serious charges, including murder. Her father is just 2 rooms down from her. He is also recuperating and spends his days dreaming of killing his daughter. Things take off from this point. A group of friends and honest cops join together to prove Lisbeth is innocent of all charges, that the real perpetrators are an invisible unit operating within the Security Police (SAPO), the same unit responsible for Salander’s odd behaviour and questionable mental state.

From here the book becomes what I would call a police procedural. Author Stieg Larsson obviously knew the inner workings of the Swedish political establishment, the structure and purpose of the police and, of course, the newspaper industry. In The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest, Larsson lets that knowledge out as he takes us on a virtual step-by-step journey from Salander with a bullet in her head until she finishes her case in court, to the secondary character (our real hero) Mikail Blomkvist who plans to take down the CEO of the largest newspaper in the country, help the police snuff out the nest of bad cops and criminals operating within the bowels of SAPO and put together a defense strategy for Salander that has the potential to wreak revenge on virtually everyone who has ever hurt her.

Reviewers at The New York Times and The Globe and Mail, to name a few, just don’t like the phenomenal success of these three books. You can feel it all the way through their reviews. Reviews, by the way that just can’t find a way to pick apart these monumental, international bestsellers. I think these reviewers just don’t “get it.”

Yes, Larsson didn’t know all he should have with respect to writing fiction: he was a reporter and news editor for many years. It’s a different kind of writing. Yes, he sometimes let his right wing politics loose on left wing ideals and notions. Yes, there were a number of messages in his writing, the most important being his statement about the state’s role in the diminishment of women, as well as many abhorrent individual behaviours that seem to be accepted by a complacent society. And I say: So what?

Larsson wrote detailed stories that rang so true, suspending judgment (a must for fictional stories to succeed) wasn’t ever an issue. He also entertained us with, in my mind, the most interesting antihero in modern fiction. Lisbeth Salander is such a mixture of characteristics, I believe she has the ability to capture readers from all genres and ages. Too bad Stieg Larrsson died. I’ve read that he intended the series to be 10 books in length. Wouldn’t that have been something?


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye

Dead Forever: Awakening

Dead Forever: Awakening
William Campbell
Glyd-Evans Press, 2010
978-0-9717960-1-0 (Hardcover)
978-0-9717960-2-7 (Trade Paperback)
978-0-9717960-3-4 (eBook)
268 pages
Science Fiction/Adventure

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Carl Brown is a homeless man who suffers from migraines so bad he takes black market drugs everyday. The headaches get worse whenever he tries to think about the past. So, he sleeps under a bridge that gives him a view of the bright lights of the city he’ll never get to visit and dreams. “Dreams are better than real life,” he says.

Then he’s targeted by soldiers who look and dress the same way—black plastic jackets and black hair cut in the shape of a helmet: black on black, BOB’s he calls them. Carl is about to learn that he’s been living on the edge of a conformist society of virtual immortals, a dumping ground for people who aren’t willing to meet society’s demands. Now the conformists (or Association) have a new solution for aberrant  citizens: they are eliminated by erasing all memory of past lives, and being banished to a lonely corner of the galaxy. Yes, they will keep reincarnating as all people do, but there will be no continuous memories on which to build. They even have a phrase for it: dead forever.

But Carl is rescued just before he becomes a popsicle ready for shipment. And he finds his problems, rather than being over, have just begun. Carl is really Adam. He has a mind control device embedded in his head, that once removed, still leaves him with no memory of his many past lives. And yet he’s expected to reclaim his place as the planet’s resistance leader. Thus begins a very human reawakening that leads to a battle situation where he will either remember who he is or die with no memory of how to come back from the dead.

I found Awakening, the first book in a trilogy called Dead Forever to be fast moving and fun to read: a good science fiction romp that doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. The author is mildly heavy handed when proposing certain beliefs or concepts, but I was looking for these. Most readers won’t notice.

Awakening is a professionally written and solidly edited book that I feel is well worth the price and time you’ll spend on it. Cool science concepts made believable and an interesting story line by an author who’s unafraid to have some fun while he’s writing. A great example of micro-publishing.


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road
by Cormac McCarthy
Vintage International, 2006
ISBN: 978-0-307-47630-2
Trade Paperback
287 pages
Fiction

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The Road by Cormac McCarthy is about a nameless man and his young son, referred to as the boy. They’re walking toward the southern coast of the Atlantic, hoping to escape from a winter the man knows they can’t survive. A catastrophe (also unnamed) that has turned the world into a place of ash, perpetual gray days and freezing nights hasn’t finished with them yet. It’s getting colder every day. Scavenging for food has become necessary for survival. Almost everyone and everything in the world is dead. The only living things you’ll encounter in McCarthy’s post apocalyptic story are small groups of cannibals, slowly starving people who scavenge what they can (like the boy and the man), a dog and some chanterelles.

The boy, who was born into this life is told stories about how things used to be, while being exposed to horrific sights and events: people half melted into a highway, a baby roasting on a spit, decapitated heads displayed in many ways and dead forests where one can’t sleep because trees start falling over in the mildest of winds.

As they travel in search of warmer climes, we see that the boy has been taught a rudimentary of sense right and wrong, good and bad. He also knows how to read a little. The boy and his father have no hope of a better world (other than reaching a place with a lesser degree of cold), yet they continue to scavenge to eat and to replace clothes and blankets that continually wear out from the constant walking and the unending dampness and cold. The father is dying, and as his health deteriorates his choices become very simple, very clear: self-interest for the boy and himself above all.

The man knows he’ll eventually have to kill the boy and then himself, which makes his will to survive as strong as the hardest steel. The boy having known nothing and no one else during his short life, considers the man his entire world, believing in him wholeheartedly until given reason not to. This is most apparent as his father makes ever toughening decisions in order for them to survive, where the boy would have picked sharing food, helping another boy he sees in one of the ravaged towns, befriending a wandering dog and showing some basic compassion for a man who tried to steal their food and supplies. Yet they love each other unconditionally, even as the boy slowly works toward a form of independence.

How the book ends, the resolution of the death problem, the culmination of the boy’s mental growth and what it will mean for his future, is and must be expected. McCarthy has left no room for hope as he writes of the dead world and the few left who pick at its skin. But the beauty of the love and companionship in a place where you would expect just the opposite simply mesmerizes. The Road is a book that sticks its claws into your chest and doesn’t let go until long after you put the book away.

The main reason for this last statement is the way McCarthy writes. As my 18 year-old son said today. “He [McCarthy] hates punctuation and writes so simply, yet I felt like I was reading poetry.” Further discussion revealed what my boy meant: McCarthy’s writing seems so simple and clean to him—short scenes, no quotation marks when someone’s speaking, characters who speak in monosyllables and a book that’s so easy to read it’s finished before you’re ready to let it go. Yet when you do come away from The Road, it’s with the feeling you’ve been reading poetry.

The Road was a #1 National Bestseller and winner of the Pulitzer Prize.


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2010