One of the authors I really like is Cormac McCarthy. I read his book The Road and was very impressed with his style of writing. In the book his writing is stripped down to the very bones. There are no quotations and the writing feels very fragmented. Usually this is annoying in books, but it adds so much depth to this book. The whole setting and landscape to the book is stripped of all life. It is set in a post apocalyptic world where a man and his son are traveling through the grey wasteland of what’s left. They must hide from the survivors and search for food and shelter as they try and make their way to the coast. An example of the text shows the bleakness of the book.
When he got back the boy was still asleep. He pulled the blue plastic tarp off him and folded it and carried it out to the grocery cart and packed it and came back with their plates and some cornmeal cakes in a plastic bag and a plastic bottle of syrup. He spread the small tarp they used for a table on the ground and laid everything out and he took the pistol from his belt and laid it on the cloth and then he just sat watching the boy sleep. He'd pulled away his mask in the night and it was buried somewhere in the blankets. He watched the boy and he looked out through the trees toward the road. This was not a safe place. They could be seen from the road now it was day. The boy turned in the blankets. Then he opened his eyes. Hi. Papa. he said.
I'm right here.
I know.
The style adds so much to the text. The run on sentences make you feel as if you are being drug through the book and the world within. They aren't fun to read and the land created isn't a fun happy place. The short brief dialogue and short sentences show the bleakness of the situation and the dire straights that the man and his son are in.
