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The Road
I recently finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy , which you may have heard was recently an "Oprah's Book Club" pick. Not sure how I feel about that, but I suppose it's good to get folks to read something other than The Secret or whatever other feel-good crap is out there.
The Road is distinctly in the opposite camp in most respects, mostly in mood and world vision. You may have heard that it is the tale of a father and son heading south in a post-apocalyptic US. However, the vision of this world is far more blackened, gray and ashy than any you might see elsewhere, such as The Postman , or the odd Stephen King novel . More like Mad Max without all the cars (and thinly veiled homosexual anxiety) and cast in a charred landscape turned to ash, the very air dangerous to one's health. Beyond this, there is a fairly straightforward transfer of "the fire" as McCarthy's pair conceives it, from father to son. While the plot is simple and straightforward--what you might expect from a gritty, father-son communinion through toil sort of morality play, the blank dialog is spot on and the base human emotive impulse looms large, its ugly hands grasping all too closely.
This novel will leave a distinct impression and you will not be able to put it down.