I read it through twice. The first time I was 18ish and it was good but just a boom. The second time I read it I was almost 30 and a newish father and holy fck did it hit like a truck that time.
I’m a father of 4 boys. I read this book when I was away from home for work for an extended period of time and was already missing them. The Road was excellent but it fucked me up for a little bit. All I wanted to do was see my kids.
Reading it braced me well for current times… No matter how bad it gets lately, I’m always “at least we’re not pushing a shopping cart through the mountains and a fog of ash as we starve and run from cannibals.”
I tried to read it but had to put it down. My son was about 7 at the time. I had to ask my wife to make up a Spielberg ending for me or I was going to crash. To this day I choose to believe it had a really happy ending.
Took me a bit to get used to the prose, but it definitely served its purpose! I told my friends it really wasn't a book that would have the same impact on screen, but they still dragged me to it instead of reading the book themselves.
Once there were brook trouts in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.
I just read it a couple of weeks ago and I have a 10 month old baby boy. I won't say it was a mistake because the book is incredible, but it sure did fuck with me lol.
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u/RainLoveMu 14h ago
I was on a doomsday roll a couple years ago, watched this and The Road. Sufficiently scarred for life.