Cormac McCarthy, 89, has a new novel — two, actually. And they’re almost perfect. He’s written three at this point, but this one, “The Road,” is the best of them. It’s a brilliant and hilarious debut. It’s fast and funny, but it is also the most profound and complex novel I’ve ever read.
The story is set in a time not unlike our own, when the Catholic church and organized religion were in a state of almost constant warfare with each other. The story takes place in the rural Irish countryside, and it is told by an ex-priest in a bar. He is a broken man, but he has also been writing a novel.
It’s a novel. It’s not just a story, in other words, but a brilliant and darkly humorous masterpiece of literature. The book is named for the author’s father, and it is also very much a father-and-son story.
If you have read Cormac McCarthy’s work, you’ve probably heard a hundred times that he is “an extraordinary storyteller.” In one of his novels he tells the story of a priest who turns his life around and then, using his writing skills, commits a horrible crime. The point is that he was once a good man, but he now suffers from a terrible disease called writer’s block. He writes about this disease in “The Road.”
Cormac is a brilliant writer who never strays from the human condition. His characters are believable, and his themes are, to put it mildly, profound.
It may be a little confusing if you don’t read Irish, but the book is based on real events. The story is told in a bar called the SPU, which is an acronym for the Sisters of Saint Patrick of Ireland, and the bar is located near the small town of Rathcroghan in County Cork.
The story centers on Conor Ryan, a small-town priest who is suffering from writer’s block. He also suffers from writer’s block for reasons that have absolutely no effect on the plot.
Here’s a little scene I wrote when I was thinking about the book:
Conor is looking at his wife, his son, his girlfriend, and his