'This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job'
Cormac McCarthy, The Road, p77
... and so it goes, unrelenting, holding no punches, raw and honest. It was certainly one of the most harrowing books I read. And at the same time, I am glad I read it now and not before I became a father. There is a danger that you read books before their time - or rather before the time in your life for them to really talk to you, to hold you and shake you and smother you - sometimes with beauty, sometimes with pain.
It was a book that demanded and warranted respect and careful treading, a book I could only read in short bursts, for anymore was sensory overload.
Above all, it was about fatherhood, tender and brutal in equal measure, just like the real thing where someone imperfect who has not yet understood how the world works, tries to be a role model for someone innocent who looks to him for guidance, shelter and love.
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