When I was starting the book I was told it was "bleak as hell" and was reminded by the friend who loaned me the book that while she was reading it, she felt compelled to pray for the characters each night before bed. The book paints a stark and at times grotesque image of a post-apocalyptic "burned America" and the characters are surprisingly empathetic considering they have no names (simply "the man" and "the boy" throughout the novel). Much of the prose matches the landscape -- stark, fragmented, broken -- and the content left me asking: could we really come to this? Thankfully, a few (very small) tendrils of hope are wound through the nightmare...

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