Bleaker than Fiction

I lost a lot of sleep back in January because I picked up a book that I had a hard time putting down. I don't read a lot of fiction, but I would highly recommend "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy to anyone who is interested (it was recently made into a movie but I haven't seen it yet). I'd start reading in bed at 10pm, and would read well past midnight, which is much too late for me. Thankfully it's a short book, and I was able to quickly get back to my usual sleeping schedule.

"The Road" is the story of a father and son in a post-apocalyptic America, and despite the books devastatingly bleak picture of the future, it also gives glimpses of beauty and hope. I don't want to give too much away, so I'll just say that it's definitely worth your time.

Because I enjoyed "The Road" so much and because I was getting ready to head out on a trip to MN with about 1,800 miles of driving, I recently picked up and listened to McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men" on audio CD from our local library. It's another dark and deeply disturbing story. McCarthy personifies evil in a manner that is both fascinating and unsettling. Both books portray the battle between good and evil, but most of the time the evil is so horrendous that it far outweighs the good. Yet, in the most bleak circumstances, I found myself hoping against hope for the salvation of those who were good. In the darkest of stories, the small flicker of goodness, perhaps even grace, shines through.