Blogging Anniversary - 10 years

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A while ago I checked when I did my first blog post, in order to celebrate with an anniversary post. Well, that day came and went without any reaction from me. Better late than never, so here a reminder of my very first blog post from 24 October 2012.  The book was New Finnish Grammar  by Diego Marani. Marani is an Italian novelist, translator and newspaper columnist. While working as a translator for the European Union he invented a language ‘Europanto’ which is a mixture of languages and based on the common practice of word-borrowing usage of many EU languages. It was a suitable book to start with, being a book about letters, languages and memories. With a beautiful prose, the novel went directly to my heart.  "One night at Trieste in September 1943 a seriously wounded soldier is found on the quay. The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship, Pietri Friari gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can ide...
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The Road by Cormac McCarthy

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A modern classic is this tale from a future where earth is destroyed by a catastrophe of some kind. A father taking his son on the road to a warmer and better place, where you don’t have to fight for your life. Where people are good people. Where you don’t have to be afraid of the people you meet and take for granted that they will kill you to get something to eat.

Their odyssey takes them through a post-apocalyptic America, where nothing much has survived, but a few people. All are looking for food and other things that can help them survive. It is so well written and described in such a way that you are there with the father and the son. Feeling their longing for a place that is no more, living on memories of their wife and mother, trying to find a place they can call home and settle down. Where there will be food for the day, warmth enough to be comfortable, and they do not have to suspect everyone they meet for going to kill them to get the meagre raisons of food they have.

McCarthy has written a totally enthralling story on a future we all dread. You get absorb by the fight for a decent life that the father is trying to arrange for his son. The father is sick and dying and, apart from other fears, he cannot bear to think of leaving his son in the abyss. The closer to the end of the book you come, the more you wonder how it will end.

It is not a very thick book, but each page is filled with the story of a fight for survival and wonderful dialogue between the father and son. McCarthy received the Pulitzer prize for this book and he is really worth it. A wonderful tale in all its terror.

I don't want to spoil this master piece, but I could not help thinking of the Mad Max films that visualise a similar future world.

Comments

  1. Travellin Penguin24 June 2016 at 09:04

    I read this when it came out and it is still in my head. A really good story and characters

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    1. Lisbeth 25 June 2016 at 13:26

      Indeed it is. Have you read anything else by McCarthy? I think the most famous other ones might be 'All The Pretty Horses' which must be a totally different kind of book, and 'No Country for Old Men' which might be more in the style of 'The Road', but I don't really know. Just know they have made films based on the books.

      Delete
  2. Debbie Rodgers24 June 2016 at 21:36

    I haven't read The Road and I'm not likely to, but every time I hear someone talk about it I, too, am reminded of the only Mad Max film I ever saw.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lisbeth 25 June 2016 at 13:24

      I presume you have seen the first film, which I think is the best. Yes, the book do have the same despair in trying to survive in a world gone astray.

      Delete

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