I was in London this week with work and I bought this for something to read.
F^ck me. Don't read it unless you''re in a sound state of mind or you'll be liable to throw yourself out of the nearest window or under a bus. Incredibly well written but so bleak. I've read many 'dark' books but nothing as bleak as this.
The book is set some years after an unnamed catastrophe. Probably 8-10 years. The only clue to the disaster is a memory of the man (never named) where there were several concussions and a glow in the sky and the power went off. It seems he knew what had happened because he fills the bath for water but he never says.
What ever the cause was the effect was that everything dies apart from some surviving humans. All plants are dead, all the animals are dead, all the fish are dead, all the insects are dead. the landscape is nothing but dead scrub and ash from the dead trees burning. It's getting colder (nuclear winter?) so the man takes the child south on the road.
The only others on the road are other nomadic humans and roving gangs of cannibals. McCarthy details in gruesomely practical terms how these people survive. There isn't much to the story, it's the man and his boy surviving on the road. It isn't stated in the story but you know in the end everyone will die and the man and the boy's journey is ultimately futile, but that doesn't matter.
It's a book that really sticks in your head. How the apocalypse really would be. Not a flash and a bang Hollywood style but a long drawn out suffering death over decades.
I've not seen the film, and I do want to see it but after reading the book I wouldn't look forward to it, if that makes sense.