Wow, what a book. Now there are many reviews out there that surely are more analytical than mine (I should read them then), so I’m not going to review it, per se.

If you’re unfamiliar with the author, like I was before I’d decided to read it, he’s the author of No Country for Old Men, adapted for the big screen [and directed] by Joel and Ethan Cohen.

The book takes place somewhere in the western world a few years after an unspecified apocalypse. There’s ash everywhere – in the sky, in the water and on the ground. Nothing grows, food is almost non-existent (unless you include the weaker of the humans still alive). A father and his young son trudge through this achromatic new world on their way to..? If a lack of food isn’t enough to make your heart bleed, especially for the child, there’s bad ass marauders and an unforgiving winter to reckon with as well. Fortunately, the father is sensible and handy (McGyver-handy!) and scrapes up unexpected food every few days, often when they’re just about to succumb to starvation. (It was a reminder to me that I really should learn more survival skills…at least have some fresh water stashed away.)

The same bleak surroundings and their own hopeless predicament, to which they wake up day after day, are steadily rendered by the author in crisp, creative new ways (keeping me tethered to my dictionary) on every page for the duration of the book, yet I never once tired of the grim picture he painted.

So dire was the pair’s situation, and so ghastly the consequences should they encounter other desperate, barbaric humans, that I often found my eyes darting ahead, dreading what peril I might find them in next.