The Passenger
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
1980, PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wetsuit and plunges from the boat deck into darkness. His divelight illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot's flightbag, the plane's black box, and the tenth passenger. But how? A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit - by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul.
Traversing the American South, from the garrulous bar rooms of New Orleans to an abandoned oil rig off the Florida coast, The Passenger is a breathtaking novel of morality and science, the legacy of sin, and the madness that is human consciousness.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Across the world, Cormac McCarthy fans waited with bated breath for The Passenger, the first new novel from the enigmatic author since 2006’s Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Road. The Passenger was announced as the first of a duo, with its sequel, Stella Maris arriving a month later. The story begins with a dive team headed by Robert “Bobby” Western as they uncover the remains of a charter flight and discover something curious—the flight’s black box and a single passenger are missing. The wreck goes unreported everywhere but not unnoticed as Western quickly finds himself pursued by mysterious powers. What follows is a strange, beguiling tale of family tragedy, physics and metaphysics and the ties between people that transcend time and space, told as only McCarthy could tell it. The expansive, abstract ideas delivered in exquisitely precise prose will ensnare and delight long-term McCarthy readers. And for those who haven’t yet had the pleasure? This is the tip of the iceberg in a body of work from one of the finest American writers working today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McCarthy returns 16 years after his Pulitzer-winning The Road with a rich story of an underachieving salvage diver in 1980 New Orleans, the first in a two-volume work. Bobby Western, son of a nuclear physicist who worked on the atomic bomb, is tasked with investigating a private plane crash in the Gulf. The plane's crew is dead, the black box is missing, and one passenger is unaccounted for. Soon, agents of the U.S. government begin to harass Western and his coworker, then this colleague turns up dead. This thriller narrative is intertwined with the story of Western's sister, Alicia, a mathematical genius who had schizophrenia and died by suicide. In flashbacks of Alicia's hallucinations, vaudevillian characters perform for her—most notably, a character named the Thalidomide Kid. Alicia and the Kid engage in numerous conversations about arcane philosophy, theology, and physics—staples of the philosopher-tramps, vagabonds, and sociopaths of McCarthy's canon, though their presence doesn't feel quite as thematically grounded as they do in his masterworks. Still, he dazzles with his descriptions of a beautifully broken New Orleans: "The rich moss and cellar smell of the city thick on the night air. A cold and skullcolored moon.... At times the city seemed older than Nineveh." The book's many pleasures will leave readers aching for the final installment.
