The design and UX isn't done, Rob and Abbie, okkurrrr! 😌
tracytcamp's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Violence, Mental illness, Suicide, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
boring_samizdat's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
A bleak and masterful study on grief, existence, and the nature of reality. Often dialogue heavy, swapping back and forth between the main character's sister (whose sections are all italicized, making a jarring start to the story) and different sequences in the protagonist's life, which are told on a non-linear timeline that often shifts without warning, sometimes mid-chapter or even paragraph. It really benefits from a second reading of it and the companion/sequel Stella Maris, as lots of context and sequences of events are given out slowly throughout the course.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness and Suicidal thoughts
Minor: Suicide, Death of parent, and Incest
jimio's review against another edition
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
christynhoover's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
I need to reread the conclusion. --Not sure it all comes together for me. I can't tie together the last part of the book with the mysterious aspect of "the missing passenger" at the beginning of the story. --Probably it's me being dense.
I have liked the author's writing style in earlier work that I've read and I like this one too although occasionally the philosophical and scientific arguments were tedious. Still, overall, I found the work thought-provoking about loss, among other things.
I have liked the author's writing style in earlier work that I've read and I like this one too although occasionally the philosophical and scientific arguments were tedious. Still, overall, I found the work thought-provoking about loss, among other things.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Mental illness, and Suicide
k1ng_dippy's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
This is McCarthy's swan song. A fitting goodbye to a literary great. It is wrapped in darkness and big questions along with the certainty that some answers cannot be found.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Incest and Suicide
unboxedjack's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
I've been thinking on why I liked this book, as perplexing as it is to read. McCarthy's narrative is not really a narrative, from how I see it. Rather, it feels like a selection of asides we're invited to eavesdrop in on, not fully understanding the undertones of dialogue or plot. They're more like a literary academician's version of "The Moth", where not much happens, but we're still dragged along. In a sense, McCarthy is making us the passenger, leaving us with no option but to stay with the story and his characters' navigation of the events unfolding. Well, no: there is the option to DNF, but I think McCarthy reflects on that with the death of the protagonist's sister.
McCarthy's obviously meditating on the mindless and possibly meaningless minutiae of existence here. He seems to propose that we're passengers in life in general, being torn from one life event to the next without much rhyme or reason. The protagonist is thrown around from situation to situation, seemingly without any actual will. If we have no control over our lives, then what is the point? This could be a nihilistic view, but I disagree. McCarthy is offering us an opportunity to be engaged in the passenger role. We can choose to focus on the things outside of our control and despair. We can focus only on the hedonism of living only in the moment. Both those perspectives make us passive passengers in life. To be active is to embrace the dialectic that the mindlessness & meaninglessness can be both a source of pain, but brilliance, too.
McCarthy's obviously meditating on the mindless and possibly meaningless minutiae of existence here. He seems to propose that we're passengers in life in general, being torn from one life event to the next without much rhyme or reason. The protagonist is thrown around from situation to situation, seemingly without any actual will. If we have no control over our lives, then what is the point? This could be a nihilistic view, but I disagree. McCarthy is offering us an opportunity to be engaged in the passenger role. We can choose to focus on the things outside of our control and despair. We can focus only on the hedonism of living only in the moment. Both those perspectives make us passive passengers in life. To be active is to embrace the dialectic that the mindlessness & meaninglessness can be both a source of pain, but brilliance, too.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide attempt, Suicide, and Suicidal thoughts
Minor: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Animal death, Death, Eating disorder, Grief, Incest, Dementia, Death of parent, and Self harm
lynnenad's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Loved this book but I have no idea what it was about. The characters are great. The dialogue is fabulous. There are some scary events. But nowhere is there a coherent story with a beginning, a middle and an end . Does that matter? Maybe?
Content Warnings
Moderate: Schizophrenia/Psychosis and Suicide
ncghammo's review
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide and Mental illness
habeels's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Minor: Suicide
emmonsannae's review against another edition
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