'Each the other’s world entire'

A fair selection of my friends will know that this has become one of my new loves. I’ve recently read “The Road” and a few days ago saw the film adaptation so here are my views on the two. My copy of the book came from a charity shop and it was in excellent condition with the original receipt inside. After having used it as a bookmark for some time, I finally looked at this item in more detail.

Apparently this particular copy was bought alongside a book entitled 'Beautiful Kitchens'. I have to salute the eclectic nature of this particular visit to W H Smith while wondering how dull your life needs to become to want a book about especially attractive kitchens. Thinking about it, this may well be the reason this book was on the charity shop shelf alongside the obligatory Dan Browns, Maeve Binchys and East of The Sun (A book that so offended one fellow traveller that she abandoned it on a train, throwing it onto an empty seat in utter contempt). Whatever their reasons, I’m grateful to this lover of kitchens for helping me to afford the beginning of my love affair with Mr McCarthy.

 Having discussed the origin of my book, I’m going to start with the film. Just because I can. Like a lot of book lovers, I generally don’t find that film adaptations are as good as their original sources. They can be excellent films that I truly enjoy watching but they just can’t compete with the original. With the best screenwriter, director and actors on board, a film still suffers from its limitations the main two being the lack of a narrative voice / interior monologue (Voiceovers cannot capture this really) which means an inability to have the same amount of information and the simple fact that a reader’s imagination is still stronger than the best CGI and effects. On the other hand, a film offers a completely different form of storytelling. An actor’s expression tells us what it could take a paragraph to convey in words.

With that out of the way, I can say it was a damn good film. The actors were excellent. I am a long standing fan of Viggo Mortensen, but I was truly impressed by Kodi Smit-McPhee. A lot of child actors make me want to hit my head against the nearest blunt object but his performance was wonderful. Between them, they carried a film that is slim on plot and heavy on character, without it being a strain at all.

Another strong point was the film’s cinematography. You can do a lot with grey apparently. The skies are grim and the vast empty landscape appears inhospitable and above all lonely. There’s something about it that is both beautiful and ugly simultaneously. I suppose that pretty much sums up both the book and the film. Both are well worth a look although the latter lacks some of the original’s subtlety. When the action does occur in the film, it is too much. The score brings out the dramatic violin strings and because we are pretty much being shouted at “THIS IS A REALLY TENSE MOMENT”, it’s not. It seems dissonant with both the plot and the otherwise beautiful soundtrack. This is a small gripe though probably more about film conventions in general rather than this one in particular. When you read a book the font doesn’t change when it’s exciting. The reader creates the mood from the text.

There is one thing you get in the book that the film cannot give you though and that is Cormac McCarthy’s writing. His prose is really quite beautiful. This is no pretentious meandering – the book is very readable, but you often get caught out in the quieter moments of the story by a simple description that makes you really feel something. He manages to convey an awful lot with just a few well-placed words. Punctuation is minimal – no commas, no speech marks only basic sentences. It takes a moment to adjust to, but it makes the writing look stripped down. Despite this, it is still incredibly elegent.
 

 What made the book great for me though is that it’s about striving to retain goodness and a sense of humanity against all the odds. Most of all, it’s a book about the bond between father and son. I think that’s worth noting. Such stories are quite rare. We live in a society with an increasing number of single mothers and an acceptance that children grow up in a maternal environment. When we read about or see fathers with their children in books and the media, they tend to be awkward, absent or aloof - all conveniently ‘A’s apparently. Before we drown in a sea of alliteration, I guess I want to point out that I enjoyed a book where fatherhood is given the same importance as motherhood. The Man is strong enough to survive and protect his child in the bleakest of environments yet is still incredibly caring. McCarthy has created a man who is a nurturing figure that is wholly masculine. I would be hard-pushed to think of another writer who has quite so aptly done this.

Both the film and the book are known for being GRIM. A few people commented on me reading such a depressing book. I would say it's the opposite. It makes you think about the value of life. When you realise what you are lucky enough to have, suddenly your own life seems unimaginably hopeful. Put simply, you're not stuck in a dying world with only your offspring and a shopping trolley for company.

Overall, I can simplify this review into a quite simple message. Don’t waste your life assessing the aesthetic value of kitchens.