Picked up this book,'The Road' on the way home last night, read most of it in one sitting - which means that at least the storyline must be quite good...

Since reading 'The Stand' by Steven King as a nipper I've always had a soft spot for bleak apocalyptic dystopian nightmare futures. So far my main gripe is that the author lays it on waaaay too thick with the cold and the wet and the grey and the dark. Literally every single thing in this book is cold, wet, grey or dark. Even the surface of the sun is probably cold, wet, grey and dark.

In terms of overbearing scene setting, the only other book I can think of that I've read with such a similar overwrought sense of melancholia was
'The End of The Affair' by Grahame Greene, which was definately one of the most turgid books I have ever had the misfortune of chancing upon, it inadvertantly perfectly encapsulated the navel-gazing and introspective selfishness of unrequited love that I often felt as a teenager. Unfortunately I hated the book so much I have been scared off Greene ever since, although I feel about ready to give him another chance - not sure which book to begin again with though...?