Yes, yes, yes. I am reading and nodding along with your DW review and agreeing with pretty much everything. No, exactly everything. *g* And I do hope the next companion does not pine after the Doctor because, enough!
I also read The Road last month for my book club. Here's what we came up with regarding the end, FWIW.
The man who finds the boy at the end of the book implies that he and his family have been watching the boy and his father, and wondered how they two of them had made it so far keeping to the road. We interpreted that to mean that there were more "good guys" out there, and the boy and the man had not run into them because those others had purposefully kept off the road, considering it too dangerous. "If you stay you need to keep out of the road. I don't know how you made it this far."
They've been watching, and assume the father has died when they see the boy alone. He also mentions that he debated with his wife about the decision to come for him. "There was some discussion about whether to even come
( ... )
And I do hope the next companion does not pine after the Doctor because, enough!
It's gotten really old really fast.
Very disturbing novel, but one of my favorite reads so far this year. The prose is spare but it reads like poetry. And I did appreciate that glimmer of hope at the end.
I think that, like cofax7 said, it wouldn't have been emotionally bearable without it. It's a book that is going to stay with me for a very long time. (You might want to check out Blood Meridian if this sort of thing interests you; it's a very particular picture of the American West and the inexorable forces of violence and greed that underly a lot of our comfortable mythology about settlement
( ... )
The idea of people hiding out and watching the road for danger coming didn't seem that far out there for me, given the circumstances of the book.
I guess, but I rather got the impression that the other man and his family were also traveling south? The man and the boy's journey was sporadic enough, and filled with enough detours off the road, that I have a hard time picturing them being easily watched from a distance. And the man was so careful about things like that that I kind of hate to think that someone was watching them without him being aware of it; that level of protection was the only thing he had to give the boy, and it was something he was really good at. Then again, at the end, the man was very ill and they were more or less staying in the same spot for a few days. (And while I thought the lack of names was really effective in the novel, it makes it really hard to talk about the part where there were two men!)
Yes, I didn't get the impression that they had been following them, but more that they had seen them coming and then the boy and the man stopped because the man was so ill. I rather liked the idea of more "good guys" being out there, I guess. :-)
And yes, the absence of names, along with the punctuation (or lack thereof) was very effective. But yeah, we had that problem in book club - "the man - no, the other man." Hee.
I also read The Road last month for my book club. Here's what we came up with regarding the end, FWIW.
The man who finds the boy at the end of the book implies that he and his family have been watching the boy and his father, and wondered how they two of them had made it so far keeping to the road. We interpreted that to mean that there were more "good guys" out there, and the boy and the man had not run into them because those others had purposefully kept off the road, considering it too dangerous. "If you stay you need to keep out of the road. I don't know how you made it this far."
They've been watching, and assume the father has died when they see the boy alone. He also mentions that he debated with his wife about the decision to come for him. "There was some discussion about whether to even come ( ... )
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It's gotten really old really fast.
Very disturbing novel, but one of my favorite reads so far this year. The prose is spare but it reads like poetry. And I did appreciate that glimmer of hope at the end.
I think that, like cofax7 said, it wouldn't have been emotionally bearable without it. It's a book that is going to stay with me for a very long time. (You might want to check out Blood Meridian if this sort of thing interests you; it's a very particular picture of the American West and the inexorable forces of violence and greed that underly a lot of our comfortable mythology about settlement ( ... )
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The idea of people hiding out and watching the road for danger coming didn't seem that far out there for me, given the circumstances of the book.
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I guess, but I rather got the impression that the other man and his family were also traveling south? The man and the boy's journey was sporadic enough, and filled with enough detours off the road, that I have a hard time picturing them being easily watched from a distance. And the man was so careful about things like that that I kind of hate to think that someone was watching them without him being aware of it; that level of protection was the only thing he had to give the boy, and it was something he was really good at. Then again, at the end, the man was very ill and they were more or less staying in the same spot for a few days. (And while I thought the lack of names was really effective in the novel, it makes it really hard to talk about the part where there were two men!)
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And yes, the absence of names, along with the punctuation (or lack thereof) was very effective. But yeah, we had that problem in book club - "the man - no, the other man." Hee.
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