The Road. By Cormac McCarthy.

Synopsis: A father and son go on a journey to find a better life in a cruel dark world.

Key Takeaways

No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.

Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, dont you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget

He  was beginning to think that death was finally upon them and that they should find some place to hide where they would not be found. There were times when he sat watching the boy sleep that he would begin to sob uncontrollably but it wasn’t about death. He wasn’t sure what it was about but he thought it was about beauty or about goodness. Things that he’d no longer any way to think about at all. They squatted in a bleak wood and drank ditch water strained through a rag. He’d seen the boy in a dream laid out on a cooling board and woke in horror. What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.

He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

Final Thoughts: This is a book about a parents love for their child. Throughout the book he can end the grief by killing them both but he decides to go on in the cruel world just to give his son a chance at a better life. The book shows how this love persists in the darkest of worlds. The purest of love between parents and their children.