This is one of those books I felt I had to read. It has all the right ingredients, an everyman struggle against impossible odds, an inexplicable end of the world where anything might happen, two characters you have to follow and excellent writing pacing and structure.

            Be warned, however, this view of man is grimmer than a story about the plague in the middle ages. Mr. McCarthy has set out to show man at his worse and succeeds. He places “The man” and “the boy” against a back drop of complete destruction where hope or any other positive thinking just does not exist. I can not share his view of us and our world.

            While this erudite novel is well worth reading and thinking about; I had two immediate reactions. In the beginning I could not buy an earth where there was such wholesale destruction of living matter and yet man had survived. At the end of the book  I wish I had read the story about the guy with the shotgun.