"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy

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This novel is one of the best I've read recently. It's about a man and his young son walking southward in a postapocalyptic world where almost everything living has been destroyed, and the sun is blotted out by ash. Some people have survived but are wary and most times predatory: "Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland. The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night."

The psychological effect, not just of the destruction but of the hopelessness, is conveyed again and again: "No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you."

There is a narrative, a story, to this book, but these lyrical portions pop out every now and then. Good novel.
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