The world will end not with a bang, but a whimper.

I just finished the audio version of Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 novel The Road.

It won the the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

… a boy and his father lurch across the cold, wretched, wet, corpse-strewn, ashen landscape of a post-apocalyptic world. The imagery is brutal even by Cormac McCarthy’s high standards for despair. This parable is also trenchant and terrifying, written with stripped-down urgency and fueled by the force of a universal nightmare. “The Road” would be pure misery if not for its stunning, savage beauty.

This is an exquisitely bleak incantation — pure poetic brimstone. …

NY Times book review – The Road Through Hell, Paved With Desperation

Highly recommended if you think you have the stomach for it.

Parents of young children may want to pass it by.

I don’t think this book could translate well into a movie. On the other hand, I can’t think of any actor more suited to play the father than Viggo Mortensen.