jimio's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The Passenger opens with a premise that feels like a setup for a page-turning thriller but quickly turns into something else. Salvage diver Bobby Western investigates the sunken wreckage of a plane with a missing passenger, and no black box. He then becomes the target of mysterious agents who ask him questions he doesn’t have answers for, as his freedom is slowly taken away from him. The chapters are interspersed with flashes of Bobby’s sister Alicia whose death in the opening pages is then illustrated by her ongoing interactions with a cast of ‘entertainers’ who occupy her brilliant mind.
As it happens, the mystery of the missing passenger is not really a key theme of the book but provides a framework for a discussion of morality and grief, encompassing issues of mental illness, suicide, and the atomic bomb along the way.
Despite the horrors of some of his previous work, The Passenger somehow comes across as one of the strangest of McCarthy’s books. It doesn’t necessarily go anywhere but the journey leaves a sense of profound reflection and loss, possibly tinged by the real life death of McCarthy shortly after publication and the realisation that this book, along with its companion Stella Maris, will be the final work of this monumental American writer.
As it happens, the mystery of the missing passenger is not really a key theme of the book but provides a framework for a discussion of morality and grief, encompassing issues of mental illness, suicide, and the atomic bomb along the way.
Despite the horrors of some of his previous work, The Passenger somehow comes across as one of the strangest of McCarthy’s books. It doesn’t necessarily go anywhere but the journey leaves a sense of profound reflection and loss, possibly tinged by the real life death of McCarthy shortly after publication and the realisation that this book, along with its companion Stella Maris, will be the final work of this monumental American writer.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide
Minor: Transphobia
emmonsannae's review
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Reading this book felt like watching a looped youtube video of an especially grisly car crash at half speed from different angles. I laughed when I realized the central setting is a place called Pass Christian. C.M. asks a lot of questions he doesn’t answer. How are the sins of the past handed down to be weighed? How should we bear up under the weight of our own sin? What does it mean for our protagonist to stumble across a great sin he doesn’t understand and does not choose, and to be consumed because of it? C.M.’s meditations on the legacies of history and self recall Flannery O’Connor’s observation that if the American South is not Christ-centered, it is certainly Christ-haunted. (And yes—there is not a quotation mark to be seen for miles and miles.)
“In their recollections dream and life acquire an oddly merging egality. And I've come to suspect that the ground we walk is less of our choosing than we imagine. And all the while a past we hardly even knew is rolled over into our lives like a dubious investment. The history of these times will be long in the sorting, Squire. But if there is a common keel to our understanding it is that we are flawed. At our core that is what we know.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide, Grief, Incest, Mental illness, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Moderate: Death of parent, Cursing, Transphobia, and Alcohol
Minor: Alcoholism, Self harm, and Adult/minor relationship
davidh12's review
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The Passenger wasn’t at all what I expected. You are onboarded into this world with a mystery surrounding a crashed airplane and a missing passenger, but this plot is mostly abandoned over time. In its place, we follow Bobby Western as he converses with a diverse assortment of people he meets in his travels as he struggles to cope with his personal demons. By the end of his journey I can’t say I fully understood everything McCarthy was trying to say but I FELT it. There are some beautiful and haunting passages in this book I won’t soon forget
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Mental illness, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Moderate: Transphobia, Suicide, and Incest
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