I like vampire stories. So sue me. And no, I’m not one of those bandwagoners who jumped into the fold with Twilight & True Blood. I am an old school Bram Stoker-Ann Rice- Vampires are supposed to be scary vampire fan. I have written serious papers on Nosferatu. And I just brought that to a whole new level of nerdy.
So when I heard that Justin Cronin was redeeming the quickly devolving monster known as “Vampire” with his debut novel The Passage, I was more excited that you can possibly imagine. I mean Red Sox winning the World Series excited. Ok, maybe not that much.
I bought The Passage at the height of the summer. And it delivered, for the most part. I had nightmares, I couldn’t sleep, I was afraid to go into a dark room. I mean that is pretty much a successful scary story. But, as is my trademark, I noticed the flaws. And there were only a few, tiny, minor issues:
1) He clearly had Margaret Atwood’s novel A Handmaid’s Tale right by his side when he wrote it. The whole second half of the novel was ripped off right from her style and set up.
2) It was too long. It didn’t need to be that long. This wasn’t The Stand. You are not Stephen King. Even Stephen King isn’t Stephen King anymore.

3) Speaking of Stephen King, if A Handmaid’s Tale was on the left side of his desk, The Stand was on the right side. There were many echoes and allusions to King’s epic apocalypse novel. Maybe that’s why King is Cronin’s #1 fan.
4) The main character, Peter, was a little boring. But his name was Peter, I find that all “Peter”s in literature and cinema are boring.
5) The most glaring problem of all: it is the first part of a trilogy. Big mistake, big. Huge.

Here is where he succeeded:
1) Strong and interesting female characters.
2) Seriously, gloriously scary vampires. Not a redeeming one in the lot of them.
3) Great plotline.

Grade: All in all, I am going to give him a B. Just a B. But I’ll be honest, when I found out it was a trilogy, it took a nose dive to C. But, when I finished the book, it was B. I’ll leave it at B.

I do NOT recommend this book for sensitive readers, young readers, and people with a faint heart.

I like post-apocalyptic novels. I am just fascinated by someone’s idea of what happens “after”, whatever that “after” might be. Some of my favorites are The Stand, Oryx & Crake, and I Am Legend. It only made sense that I would eventually discover The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

The story tells a tale of a father and son who are traveling in a world that has experienced some great disaster. It is a mutual tale of survival and of love. The man wants his boy to survive, and is willing to go to great lengths to make it possible, and it is because this boy is everything he has in the world. There are many enemies on their road, scavengers, cannibals, thieves, other people just trying to survive. This makes the two of them all they have in the world that they can count on.

The setting that McCarthy creates is astonishing in its bleakness. The world is on fire, literally, the skies are gray, there is ash falling from the sky. The details that McCarthy uses to create his scenery are so vivid that it is difficult to read the novel for long stretches at a time, or in one setting. This world is just too horrible, it is too sad. What hope can there be for these characters? The answer McCarthy gives us is “Love”. It is their love that keeps them going.

It is frustrating to not know what happened to the world, it is frustrating in its sparseness and bleakness. But I don’t think this is what McCarthy set out to do, I think he set out to create a portrait of humanity and of love and he set out to show what it can be worth in the worst of times. So while I was constantly frustrated and forcing myself to follow the pair on their road, I can appreciate the value in the story he tells.  I do feel the ending was not nearly strong enough for the intense journey he leads his reader through.

This is also a very “male” story, and by that I mean, almost all of the characters are male, and the perspective and emotional language is very male. The story is a deep well of emotions, but these are not clearly spelled out. The emotional and spiritual essence of the surface remains just below the surface throughout the novel. Readers who enjoy spelled out emotions, warmth, or a clear ending will not find this story appealing.

This is a novel for two kinds of people: deep thinkers and for people with a great deal of patience. Thinkers will love this novel for all the questions and possibilities it poses, and for the portrait it paints, both of the world and of humanity. People with patience who can force themselves through the bleakness of McCarthy’s vision will appreciate that they have a whole picture, whether or not they like that picture.

Grade: B/B-