The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Book)

Genre: Post apocalyptic father and son fiction

304 pages

About $10

--9/10--

The Road is a little like a new pair of shoes. They look nice, and when you try them on at the store they seem great. Once you put them on at home though you're confronted with a few blisters and your feet get sore the first day. However, walk around in them for a couple of hours and you're rewarded with a great shoe wearing experience.

The Road is a tough book to get into. It starts out confusingly and with some very heavy speculation about the nature of things. That and the fact that the characters don't have names and there is some unusual punctuation, or lack of it, makes the book all too easy to put down. I know, I stopped reading it twice. Thus is the beauty of The Road though. It is a book where the writing style very much matches the setting, something that is not necessarily hard to do, but something that is often very challenging to do effectively.

The plot moves slowly most of the time, with bone jarring juts of intensity sprinkled throughout. The story moves so slowly that the reader is often lulled and McCarthy seems to slap you in the face saying "pay attention you dolt, stuff IS going to happen." While the book doesn't actually slap you, the narrative does an excellent job of drawing the reader in. Once you get going it is hard to put the road down, and the compassion it elicits for the characters, as well as humanity itself, makes it a must read book.

The story follows the man and the boy as they journey down the eastern coast of the United States hoping to reach what they hope will be a sunny and warm Florida. They have only a shopping cart full of things and very little chance of finding much else except death and starvation. One of the interesting things about McCarthy's novel is that it doesn't have a true antagonist, unless you consider life to be the bad guy. The pair is looking only safety and happiness, and no matter how hard they try they cannot seem to find it. The book is sad but it doesn't force you to like it, there aren't any cute moments or tear jerking breakups. To call the story bleak is an understatement, but it goes a long way towards making one appreciate things just a little bit more.

The Roadhouse (Restaurant)

4200 Preston Fall City Road Southeast

FAll City, WA 98024
(425) 222-4800

--7/10-- on the ol' goodness ruler

Located in the bustling downtown metropolis of Fall City, the roadhouse is an inn-cum-restaurant that serves up good local food in a pleasant atmosphere.

The Roadhouse has been around for a while, and that’s saying something given its location. The Roadhouse is nestled at the end of Fall City’s street, that isn’t a typo, there is only one street, and has recently been remodeled. The outside of the restaurant looks like an old time inn and saloon, but the inside is slightly more inviting. We arrived a few minutes early and were hoping to snag a drink before the rest of our party showed up, but we were disappointed to find no bar seating. There were a few chairs near the entrance but they looked more like they were decorative.

The Roadhouse is a bit infamous for having less than stellar service, and the first few minutes of our dinner didn’t seem to say otherwise. One of our friends ordered a Blue Moon beer and was handed something that more resembled coffee. To the Roadhouse’s credit, the next one was on the house. All of our food came quickly except for two salmon dishes that were sent to the bar area by mistake.

I had a duck dish with a berry sauce which was excellent. The duck was some of the most tender that I’ve ever tasted and the vegetables were fresh and not overly buttery. The berry sauce on the duck was another new taste for me and it was excellent as well. I was only able to sample one other dish, salmon pasta with a crème sauce, and it too was very tasty. The sauce wasn’t overly heavy and didn’t weigh down the noodles and the salmon. The dishes were well portioned and while on the expensive side, they seemed adequately priced.

We ordered several desserts, including the famous Hot Chocolate Cake. The other desserts, while tasty, were nothing to write to Betty Crocker about. The Hot Chocolate Cake certainly lived up to its name. Topped with a marshmallow and practically oozing out of the cup, the chocolate cake was both decadent and delicious. Different enough that it’s worth ordering, I almost believe stories of people driving from Mercer Island just for coffee and dessert.

Despite a name that brings about images of bikers and truckers spilling beer all over each other, The Roadhouse is anything but. A pleasant dining experience and a menu that makes your mouth water makes the Roadhouse a great place for those looking for a nice night out but don’t want to break the bank or struggle to find parking. I hope that I will have the pleasure of dining there again soon.