Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Der Passagier

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.”

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othersociologist's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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travisslater's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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knorkemann's review against another edition

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Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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ivan_tw's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective medium-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

2.5

I almost feel like I shouldn't rate since it's really only 2/3 of the story, but I'll review just based on the book itself.

The Passenger is a good but not exceptional McCarthy novel that has a lot of references and callbacks to his previous work (Outer Dark, No Country for Old Men) while unfortunately never being as strong as those works. The characters are mostly fine, though a few of them - Long John, the Thalidomide Kid - are extremely obnoxious. I eventually started skimming Alicia's chapters because the Kid was so irritating. The story is nice and kept me engaged, though it's unfortunate that the central "mystery", such as it is, becomes such a nonentity. I wasn't expecting it to be solved or anything, but it's pretty much forgotten about 50 pages in. The relationship between Bobby and Alicia is strong and intriguing, but it's sort of a shame that this will probably be McCarthy's last novel and it's mostly him nicking ideas from The Sound & The Fury.

Still curious to read Stella Maris, but this duology may end up one of McCarthy's minor works, which is too bad.

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tobsi's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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johannawilbur's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad slow-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? It's complicated

2.25

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hannahhenk's review against another edition

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mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

I’d never read any of McCarthy’s books before and perhaps this wasn’t the one to start with. The author has a very distinct writing style and by the time I had gotten semi-used to the lack of quotation marks and apostrophes I was already 100 pages in. I found myself having to reread parts as I couldn’t figure out who was saying what and even which characters were in certain scenes; having finished the book I’m still not sure what happened in the majority of it.

I am very much a fan of stories which don’t over explain every aspect of the plot and allow the reader to come to their own conclusions and this book allows for that.

There were parts of the book that gripped me and at these points I thought that I may finally have read enough to understand. This sense never lasted more than a few pages though.

McCarthy is a major figure in American literature and I do understand the love for his stories, his writing style may just not be for me.

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