What Not To Read, Vol. 2

One of my favorite things about traveling is all the time I have to read. I have never minded all the waiting or long layovers because I like to take advantage of so much quiet time to sit down with a cup of coffee and my book. So I was very disappointed to find that the book I finished on my trip to Chicago was to be Volume 2 in the small category of "What Not To Read".

The book: The Road
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Misleading things on the cover that led me to believe it was worth $14.95 and a week of my time:
1. National Bestseller - So a lot of people bought it. Doesn't necessarily mean a lot of people liked it.
2. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize - Do the people who give out this prize actually read the book?
3. "It's gripping, frightening and ultimately, beautiful. It might very well be the best book of the year, period." San Francisco Chronicle - It is neither gripping nor beautiful. It is boring and ugly. There were a few parts that were mildly frightening. And the only way it could be the best book of the year is if it were the only book besides "Love In The Time Of Cholera".

Here's what I didn't like about it. It was vague, depressing, completely anticlimactic, and it had very poor punctuation. The premise of the book is this: a father and son are walking along a road in post-apocalyptic America; hence the name, The Road.
Vague: We are never told what caused the apocalypse. No one in the entire book has a name (they're just "the boy" and "the man"). There are several references to "the good guys" and "the bad guys", but we don't know who is who and why. Everyone is trying to kill everyone, but the motive for all the violence isn't revealed. The slightly positive thing about the vagueness is that it keeps you going. It spurs you onward to read more, telling yourself "Surely it's going to tell me what happened and where they're going and who the bad guys are and blah blah blah . . ." It's just a HUGE letdown at the end when none of the questions are answered.
Depressing: They are virtually alone in the world. They are starving, freezing, dying. They are struggling to survive, but there seems to be absolutely nothing left to live for.
Anticlimactic: The goal is for them to reach the coast. Who knows which coast because it's all so vague. So on pg 215, they finally reach the coast. And guess what!?! NOTHING HAPPENS. They stay there for a little while, then turn around and get back on the road. Then the man gets sick and dies. The boy meets another man with a small group of people, and he hits the road with them. Then there is a random closing paragraph about some brook trout. "Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again." I have no freakin' clue what that's all about.
Very poor punctuation: This book is an English teacher's nightmare. The guy doesn't use quotation marks. It's very confusing to distinguish between what's actually said aloud, and what the man is just thinking. And he doesn't even put an apostrophe in some words. It's full of "cant" and "dont" and "didnt". Now that's just lazy.