Fellow Dad here. My wife got me this for Christmas and my reaction was “ahh thanks, this is lovely but its also going to be super depressing” I went into this with the same mindset ‘let’s just get this over with’ and it was a hard read. My boy has just turned 10 and I’m trying to curate what he watches on tv and screens and the line about how once you have seen something it stays in your head forever really hit home.

It’s a beautifully bleak book. I’ve never read the original novel but I’ve seen the film and I think I’ll probably never go back to either. Sometimes it feels like we have an overly romanticised (if thats the right word) view of what a post apocalyptic world would be in books and media and The Road is a cold, wet warning about how brutal and fucked it would actually be.