I liked this book a lot.

It is actually a bit hard to recommend to everyone, because parts of it are somewhat disturbing, but I think it has a lot of value. To me the book was not so much a cautionary story about what might happen to our world in an apocalypse or a warning to be prepared --- it's about what happens to the human spirit in the face of absolute hopelessness. It's about the horrifying aspects of human nature that come out in desparate situations and also about the mercy and kindness that can emerge as well.

Certain questions raised by the choices that the characters have to make are profound and disturbing. Like the question of what to do with the last one or two bullets. Do you use them to fight off the people who would rape, kill, and eat you? Or do you use them on yourself? Would you kill your own child to save him from horror? Would you kill yourself? Would you share food with another person you know is going to die anyway if it means you will starve sooner? What is a good person or a bad person under these kinds of circumstances? Is mercy a luxury?

Another haunting aspect of the book is the portrayal of a dead world. There are other apocalyptic visions, although I haven't read very many, but most seem to hold out some hope that some kind of life will go on. In this book, my sense was that the world is not coming back. Almost everything is already dead. Certainly all the plants are dead. There is almost nothing left to eat, and the sense is that there will never be anything more. Everything is turning to ashes. The hopelessness of the setting is very important to the book and is portrayed convincingly.

It took me awhile to get used to the style. The prose can get a bit poetic at times, and I don't generally like that. But I did get used to it, and there wasn't as much of it as I feared when I first started the book. Also, the author doesn't use the normal punctuation for dialog. There are no quotation marks, and the author does not say who is saying what (no "I'm hungry," the boy said. Just I'm hungry.) I eventually got used to it, but I always think something like that is kind of gimicky. I think he does it to emphasize the bleak tone, and maybe to convey the sense of the rules breaking down, but I don't really like it. Also, neither of the main characters has a name that is revealed --- it's always the man or the boy. I'm not sure if I like that either.

Anyway, I would recommend it if you are OK with a few horrors. These are not stylized over-the-top horrors that you can just ignore as unreal either --- they are convincing, and they get to you if you are at all sensitive.