Reviews with content warning for Schizophrenia/Psychosis - Ο επιβάτης

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.

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unboxedjack's review against another edition

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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.

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lynnenad's review against another edition

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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?

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emmonsannae's review against another edition

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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.”

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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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davidh12's review against another edition

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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

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bethbarron's review against another edition

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dark 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

4.0

Woof. I will always be enamored by McCarthy's writing style. No quotations, leaving you to guess (pay attention) who is talking, no apostrophes for "not" contractions, so much vocabulary, so many references.
It's glorious.
However.
This book. It is both bizarre stream of consciousness and conversation and wonderfully heartbreaking depiction of someone struggling with heritage and mental illness (with a big ol' dose of incestuous feelings).
It's. Challenging. Interesting. Oddly compelling.

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