I was gobsmacked when I first heard that Oprah had actually chosen Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”:http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0307387895/ for her book club. My initial reaction was more a product of my assumption about the demographic of her readership than anything else, although I do remember mumbling to myself _Did she actually read the damn thing_?
I consider The Road to be McCarthy’s masterpiece (at least one of them), on par with the violence and heartbreak of _Blood Meridian_, replete with the beautiful wrenching of language for which poetry strives, surpassing the lyricality of even Toni Morrison’s _Beloved_ which itself was considered an American Masterpiece the moment it was published.
Yet the book also contains horrific, nightmarish scenes (which still haunt me months after reading it) that I find more akin to horror novels than to something you’d normally read in _serious_ fiction. With all of that, it is easily the book that has _stayed_ with me the most. My compliments to Oprah and her staff for picking such a challenging novel.
