Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Cormac McCarthy wins Pulitzer Prize for The Road

Wow! Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic The Road was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

This is only the second time I have read a Pulitzer Prize winner before it was awarded (the other being Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex).

The Road is a chilling vision of American future after some sort of catastrophe which altered our country and perhaps the world forever. Nuclear? Possibly, probably. Biological? Maybe so. Doesn't really matter because the story is a quiet one of a father and son making their way in the hopes of finding a remnant of civilization.

As I mentioned in my review:
This is not a pleasant novel in the sense that the reader will necessarily want to spend times in the American Wasteland, but it is a powerful and moving novel about survival and holding on to the last glimmer of hope not for your sake, but for the sake of your child.
I still don't think The Road is a perfect novel, but I know I'm glad that McCarthy was awarded his first Pulitzer for fiction. The man writes consistently compelling fiction and he is still improving on an already impressive career.



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