I read two books recently that have a lot in common: Five Skies by Ron Carlson, and The Road by Cormac McCarthy. They are both powerfully written, though spare. They both resonate with me as a middle-aged man with sons. And they are both difficult to get through, because they portray difficult and depressing stories. To a certain extent, they both still follow a literary formula that dictates that all the struggle and suffering portrayed in the book should amount to something, and give the reader something positive to hold on to after all that emotional investment and pain. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience; though I wouldn't recommend either book to the casual reader looking for easy entertainment.
Five Skies takes three men in various stages of life and puts them together in the open air of an Idaho plateau. They are all at an itinerant point in their lives, for different reasons, and are employed temporarily as builders in a fairly remote location. The oldest of the men, who is in his sixties, has been retained to manage the job; he finds an extremely capable but somewhat indifferent man in his forties, who then suggests they also bring on the youngest of the three, a twenty-something drifter who talks a good game but tends to bolt at any suggestion of responsibility. Over the course of the project we learn more about each man and each one's separate pain. By sharing the work of the planning and construction as well as the remote life of their camp, they grow to trust and appreciate each other and the clear, cold beauty of their surroundings. The book touches on several intensely masculine themes: outdoor living, the mythology of "handy" men and construction, the subtle and silent way men appreciate each other, and the relationship between men of different generations. As their respect for each other grows, so does the reader's emotional involvement in their back stories, daily progress, and camaraderie. Soon we come to realize that the men represent not only relationships of men of different generations, but of fathers and sons. The book builds on these themes slowly and steadily, and while each man has his own tragedy in the past, their shared pain is the culmination of their story.
The Road is set in an extremely bleak version of the present or near-future in which an unexplained apocalypse has ruined the planet and left the surviving population cannibalistic, desperate, and on the verge of extinction. The environment is gray, covered in ash from the original (implied) firestorm and subsequent uncontrollable fires, and inhospitable. Most of the remaining resources have been consumed or hoarded by the survivors. A few individuals mange to coexist but are driven to extreme measures and devolve to little more than animals. Faced with this virtually unbearable scenario, a man and his son try to stay alive while traveling to what they hope will be a more survivable southwestern coast. The man is beaten down by the world as it has become, but insists on continuing to fight toward a more hospitable climate and keep himself and his young son alive in the meantime. His son has never known the world as it was. They suffer terribly, and the boy wonders what the point might be of struggling to continue. The father maintains that he and his son are the "good guys"; however, his remaining goodness applies mainly (if not only) to his unwavering love for his son and his attempt to keep them alive. The man trusts no one and refuses to extend help to anyone along the way, even though his son questions his very humanity if he is not willing to help the other survivors. Unfortunately, the man is proven right time and again when any contact with others becomes a desperate fight for survival. The book mines a depth of faith, love, and loyalty between father and son in a setting of darkness, corruption, and entropy. The payoff could tritely be characterized as bittersweet, and though even at the end McCarthy maintains the overwhelming pallor of darkness, a small light of hope and faith remain.
