The Passenger
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3.6 • 286 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Road returns with the first of a two-volume masterpiece: The Passenger is the story of a salvage diver, haunted by loss, afraid of the watery deep, pursued for a conspiracy beyond his understanding, and longing for a death he cannot reconcile with God.
Look for Stella Maris, the second volume in The Passenger series, on sale December 6th, 2022
1980, PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light 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 flight bag, 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 barrooms 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
Acclaimed American novelist Cormac McCarthy’s first novel after a 16-year hiatus is a mind-bending mystery laced with ethereal Southern gothic trappings. Bobby Western is a salvage diver hired to explore wrecked boats and oil rigs along the Gulf Coast. But after making a disturbing discovery during a routine dive to reach a crashed plane, he finds himself targeted by a shadowy and potentially dangerous organization. McCarthy masterfully interweaves this thrilling mystery with peeks into Bobby’s unsettling family history—including a father who developed nuclear weapons for the government—resulting in a brilliantly dark and unmistakably McCarthy vibe. If you’re looking for a dark and stylish brainteaser of a book, look no further than The Passenger.
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.
Customer Reviews
It’s complicated….
I’m a big Cormac McCarthy fan but this one almost broke me. It’s not an easy read by any means. The vocabulary is dense, the physics and mathematics references are challenging for those not well-versed in these subjects, and I personally found the chapters written from the viewpoint of the main character’s sister somewhat tedious. All that being said, I’m still glad I read this and plan to read the follow-up that is soon to be released. (I have read that it clarifies many details and questions from this novel.) McCarthy is one of our most talented living writers IMO, and I’d pretty much read anything he writes, but don’t expect Blood Meridian, The Road, or The Border Trilogy; this is much different.
Depressing
Long and tiresome. So not my favorite.
The weight of things
This is a story about love and death.