The Road

The questions

1. The father tells the boy they are the good guys. Does the book agree with him? Do you?
2. The boy is more generous than his father at every turn. Who is teaching whom by the end?
3. The two rounds in the pistol sit over the whole book. What do you make of a love that plans for that?
4. The man refuses to help the people on the road. Where is the line between protecting your kid and losing the thing you are protecting in him?
5. McCarthy gives them no names. What does that do to how you read them?
6. The flashbacks to the wife are brief and brutal. Do you understand her choice?
7. The world is never explained. Did you want it explained, and why do you think you wanted that?
8. The ending arrives fast. Read it as hope or read it as a last mercy. Defend your reading.
9. What is the one thing you would want your kid to have learned from you if the lights went out for good?

Running the night

• Pick the night before anyone leaves the last meeting. A fixed weeknight beats a good date.
• Text the sheet's first question two days ahead. It is the only prep anyone will do.
• Something to eat that does not need a plate on a lap.
• One person keeps time. Ninety minutes, then the book talk stops.
• Start with the round: one sentence each on where they got to. No apologies allowed.
• End by naming the next book and the next date out loud.

For this bookSay up front that anyone can pass on any question. Then honour it without comment.

BringThe book, something to write with, and the one passage you underlined.