The Passenger - BookWyrm - Personal Sized

Hardcover, 400 pages

Published Oct. 25, 2022 by Knopf.

ISBN:: 978-0-307-26899-0

(1 review)

Nominee for Best Historical Fiction (2022) 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 …

Nominee for Best Historical Fiction (2022) 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.

1 edition

Fionnáin reviewed The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

What else?

4 stars

The best moments in Cormac McCarthy's last novel are dialogues that thread out different philosophies. They mingle the threat of nuclear war with fear of surveillance, weang physics and mathematics with literature and drama. It feels like a culmination of McCarthy's life's work, with thoughts on violence, friendship and major moments in 20th Century US history central to a story that is primarily about loss. The prose is addictively brilliant.

The beauty of the book culminates in a wonderful final section that is heartbreaking, and devastating, and perfect. It is a fitting half-farewell (accompanied by Stella Maris, released alongside this book).