The York Research Database

The history of the novel is rife with father-son road trips in which movement across a wild landscape parallels the psychological states of both parent and child. Desolate lonely places, disappointing destinations, curtailed plans, and the desire to both protect and impress haunt such stories, of which Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is a prime example. It is a swift shift in temperament that unravels the road trip in Benjamin Wood’s A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better, sparking disastrous consequences.