Ten of the best adventure novels

Ian McGuire's new novel is The North Water.

One of the author's ten top adventure novels, as shared at Publishers Weekly:

The Road
by Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is a hero of mine. Most of his novels are broadly picaresque–the characters travel through a landscape (always described with extraordinary vividness and originality) and have a series of typically violent or frightening encounters with other people. The Road certainly fits that pattern. It’s a grim post-apocalyptic adventure story complete with cannibals and babies on spits. The home is destroyed and the mother is dead well before the novel begins, but there is a definite glimmer of hope at the end when the dying father entrusts his son to a new family.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Road appears on Alastair Bruce's top ten list of books about forgetting, Jeff Somers's list of eight good, bad, and weird dad/child pairs in science fiction and fantasy, Amelia Gray's ten best dark books list, Weston Williams's top fifteen list of books with memorable dads, ShortList's roundup of the twenty greatest dystopian novels, Mary Miller's top ten list of the best road books, Joel Cunningham's list of eleven "literary" novels that include elements of science fiction, fantasy or horror, Claire Cameron's list of five favorite stories about unlikely survivors, Isabel Allende's six favorite books list, the Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Joseph D’Lacey's top ten list of horror books, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five unforgettable fathers from fiction, Ken Jennings's list of eight top books about parents and kids, Anthony Horowitz's top ten list of apocalypse books, Karen Thompson Walker's list of five notable "What If?" books, John Mullan's list of ten of the top long walks in literature, Tony Bradman's top ten list of father and son stories, Ramin Karimloo's six favorite books list, Jon Krakauer's five best list of books about mortality and existential angst, William Skidelsky's list of the top ten most vivid accounts of being marooned in literature, Liz Jensen's top 10 list of environmental disaster stories, the Guardian's list of books to change the climate, David Nicholls' top ten list of literary tear jerkers, and the Times (of London) list of the 100 best books of the decade. In 2009 Sam Anderson of New York magazine claimed "that we'll still be talking about [The Road] in ten years."

--Marshal Zeringue