Oprah picks bleak 'The Road' for book club

CHICAGO, March 29 (UPI) -- Reclusive author Cormac McCarthy and outgoing talk show host Oprah Winfrey will come together both on Oprah's Chicago-based show and her popular book club.

Winfrey announced this week that McCarthy's novel "The Road" is her latest book club selection. McCarthy, 73, who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., was not on the program when the announcement was made but through his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, said he will stop by for what Winfrey called "his first television interview ever," the Chicago Tribune said.

McCarthy's work poses an interesting and daring selection for Winfrey. "The Road" is a post-apocalyptic wandering full of violence, pain, rage and longing. Yet, if the reader sticks with it, the work also has a redemptive quality, the newspaper said.

"Oh, my goodness. Those poor women don't know what they're getting into," Cormac McCarthy Society President Dianne Luce, who characterized his novels as "very bleak," told the Tribune

Winfrey even agrees about the risky choice.

"It's unlike anything I've ever chosen as a book club selection before because it's post-apocalyptic," she said. "I promise you, you'll be thinking about it long after you finish the final page."