When I read “The Road”, I felt cold, alone, scared of the darkness around me, of the bleakness of it all. Cormac McCarthy has carefully constructed a world that sucks you in from the first page and literally spits you at the last page. You can’t escape, because there is no escape for the protagonists either. You cannot take a break; there are no chapters. You are submerged in his relentless universe. You cannot navigate yourself, you cannot go back to a specific point in the book. In other words, you feel like the characters; you can only move forward, not knowing where it will lead you. You are not reading a post-apocalyptic novel but rather you are in it!