22. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The author does a great job of portraying the utter devastation wrought on the World, after what we are to assume to be a nuclear winter. He describes the desolation and 'deadness' of everything in the country surrounding a man and his son. The sky is grey, everything sits under ash, trees, vegetation, wildlife, and most people are dead.
We follow the man and his son, whose names we never learn, as they are heading south, always on the road, always moving, lest the 'bad people' that have survived catch and kill them. They have to wear masks to try to keep out some of the ash, although we know that it's probably futile as the man is already racked with coughing and spitting up blood.
We follow their journey as they scrabble to survive. The road always stretching endlessly before them, the small hope the boy has of seeing the blue sea coming to nothing when they arrive there and it too is is grey.
Amongst the tired, toxic, broken World they inhabit, the book shows that love remains and the power of the will to survive never goes out, as his papa said to the boy 'the light is inside you'. The end of the book gives hope for the boy (civilisation?).
A darkly, bleak tale that I believe shows that amongst the ashes there is a glimmer of hope.