A review by jasonlee77
The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

2.0

Definitely not a book for me, at all. I didn’t like the writing style (it’s amateurish. Yes, I said it and if it’s not amateurish, it’s certainly pretentious) and it ultimately felt like it went nowhere. I realize it has a sequel, but I won’t be reading it. So much of this book just felt pointless, like all of the meandering dialog that had nothing to do with the story. An example; late in the book a character goes into a rant about the John Kennedy assassination, that goes on for many pages and it had ZERO to do with anything in the story. Not only that but McCarthy I guess expects his audience to know all about deep sea diving before reading this. His long, wordy descriptions of the entire process without actually EXPLAINING what any of this means is wrote ONLY for people who know the process. Everyone else? Good luck making any sense out of the long, drawn out, sleep inducing chapters.

The last third of this book was so bad and hard to get through that I dropped it from 3 stars to 2 stars rating. I’m so glad this one is done!

Oh, and a side note: how many times can an author use the word “Jesus!” as a reaction from a character? McCarthy must have some type of record here.

Use something else, McCarthy! JESUS!

Merged review:

Definitely not a book for me, at all. I didn’t like the writing style (it’s amateurish. Yes, I said it and if it’s not amateurish, it’s certainly pretentious) and it ultimately felt like it went nowhere. I realize it has a sequel, but I won’t be reading it. So much of this book just felt pointless, like all of the meandering dialog that had nothing to do with the story. An example; late in the book a character goes into a rant about the John Kennedy assassination, that goes on for many pages and it had ZERO to do with anything in the story. Not only that but McCarthy I guess expects his audience to know all about deep sea diving before reading this. His long, wordy descriptions of the entire process without actually EXPLAINING what any of this means is wrote ONLY for people who know the process. Everyone else? Good luck making any sense out of the long, drawn out, sleep inducing chapters.

The last third of this book was so bad and hard to get through that I dropped it from 3 stars to 2 stars rating. I’m so glad this one is done!

Oh, and a side note: how many times can an author use the word “Jesus!” as a reaction from a character? McCarthy must have some type of record here.

Use something else, McCarthy! JESUS!

Merged review:

Definitely not a book for me, at all. I didn’t like the writing style (it’s amateurish. Yes, I said it and if it’s not amateurish, it’s certainly pretentious) and it ultimately felt like it went nowhere. I realize it has a sequel, but I won’t be reading it. So much of this book just felt pointless, like all of the meandering dialog that had nothing to do with the story. An example; late in the book a character goes into a rant about the John Kennedy assassination, that goes on for many pages and it had ZERO to do with anything in the story. Not only that but McCarthy I guess expects his audience to know all about deep sea diving before reading this. His long, wordy descriptions of the entire process without actually EXPLAINING what any of this means is wrote ONLY for people who know the process. Everyone else? Good luck making any sense out of the long, drawn out, sleep inducing chapters.

The last third of this book was so bad and hard to get through that I dropped it from 3 stars to 2 stars rating. I’m so glad this one is done!

Oh, and a side note: how many times can an author use the word “Jesus!” as a reaction from a character? McCarthy must have some type of record here.

Use something else, McCarthy! JESUS!

Merged review:

Definitely not a book for me, at all. I didn’t like the writing style (it’s amateurish. Yes, I said it and if it’s not amateurish, it’s certainly pretentious) and it ultimately felt like it went nowhere. I realize it has a sequel, but I won’t be reading it. So much of this book just felt pointless, like all of the meandering dialog that had nothing to do with the story. An example; late in the book a character goes into a rant about the John Kennedy assassination, that goes on for many pages and it had ZERO to do with anything in the story. Not only that but McCarthy I guess expects his audience to know all about deep sea diving before reading this. His long, wordy descriptions of the entire process without actually EXPLAINING what any of this means is wrote ONLY for people who know the process. Everyone else? Good luck making any sense out of the long, drawn out, sleep inducing chapters.

The last third of this book was so bad and hard to get through that I dropped it from 3 stars to 2 stars rating. I’m so glad this one is done!

Oh, and a side note: how many times can an author use the word “Jesus!” as a reaction from a character? McCarthy must have some type of record here.

Use something else, McCarthy! JESUS!