With prose that is both evocative and beautiful, McCarthy conjures a post-apocolyptic vision more unflinching and hopeless than any other I can think of.  An unnamed man and his son travel across a dead, ash-covered world in hopes of finding some more habitable place.  They scavenge for canned foods while hiding from roving bands of cannibals.  The man keeps a gun that has only two bullets; they are not meant to fight off attackers, but rather to allow the man and boy to escape into death.

This is not a book for the faint of heart.  The book does not paint a picture where there can be a happy ending.  The only happiness to be found here is the existence of a story at all; it would have been easier for the man and his son to take the easy way out.  We soon find out that is why there is no wife or mother on the journey.  McCarthy paints a landscape so dark and hopeless that the light that is the relationship between the man and his son shines incredibly brightly.

Also, this one time, they see a pregnant chick with two dudes, and then later they find that the woman gave birth and chopped the baby's head off and put the baby on a spit to eat it.  Yeah.  This book is awesome.