Six Degrees of Separation: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Six Degrees of Separation is a monthly book meme hosted by Books Are My Best and Favorite. A chain of 6 books is linked somehow–whether to all books or only to the one before it. A common book is given each month with which to start the chain.

This month’s book is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Here is the blurb from Amazon:

The searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son’s fight to survive.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

My Thoughts

I haven’t the slightest interest in reading this one. Post-Apocalyptic is like sci-fi, fantasy, and dystopian. That is–not acceptable to my brain!  So, I’m going by the blurb this time and not even planning to eventually read the book.

My Chain

 

Going with the theme of supposedly post-apocalyptic life, my first choice is If the South Had Won the War by MacKinley Cantor. To the many people stuck in the south at the end of the war, they might as well have been in a post-apocalyptic society. I’m sure many fantasized for years to come on the What ifs of the war. What if the south HAD won being chief among those fantasies that helped them get thru the first years of reconstruction. My family all fought for the North, but this is an interesting little book regardless.

How awful is this cover?? Not many times have been worse than the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution–, especially for the bourgeoise (though of course Stalin’s engineered famine in Ukraine comes immediately to mind). The Civil War raged, the local “Soviets” took away property, all who could, fled into exile. Dr. Zhivago tells of the “post-apocalyptic” word of Zhivago and Lara and the rest. This is a life-long favorite book of mine. Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak.

 

Is there any greater post-apocalyptic world than the Nazi Death Camps? Night By Elie Wiesel

Immediate post-war Berlin was close to a post-apocalyptic society. This famous diary shows what life was like during that time.  A Woman in Berlin.

 

North Korea is true post-apocalyptical world all its own. No sort of freedom exists there except for those in the ruling family. Click on the linked title to read more Nothing To Envy

I have not yet read this one, but Chernobyl the place truly IS post-apocalyptical. From the horrors of the tumors and other physical manifestations of the disaster in the people of the area to the stark reality of the abandoned apartments, shops, and workplaces. This is the real thing. Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham

 

So this month, all of my choices hinged on being a nightmare-ish and post-apocalyptical for those living in that time and place. A novella, a novella, and four works of nonfiction.

 

Would you like to join in next month? Here are the rules for Six Degrees of Separation!