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The Passenger

By: Cormac McCarthy
Narrated by: Julia Whelan, MacLeod Andrews
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Publisher's Summary

A sunken jet, a missing body, and a salvage diver entering a conspiracy beyond all understanding. The Passenger is a dark, hallucinogenic novel from Cormac McCarthy, the legendary author of Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men and The Road.

1980, Mississippi. It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wet suit and plunges into the darkness of the ocean. His dive light illuminates a 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.

Now a collateral witness to this disappearance, Bobby is discouraged from speaking of what he has seen. He is a man haunted: 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 bars 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.

The Passenger is book one in its duology. It is followed by Stella Maris.

©2022 Cormac McCarthy (P)2022 Penguin Randomhouse LLC

Critic Reviews

"[McCarthy] writes prose as clean as a bullet cutting through the air and constructs tales as compelling as any you will read." (Telegraph)

"A gorgeous ruin in the shape of a hardboiled noir thriller... It’s rich and it’s strange, mercurial and melancholic." (Guardian)

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What listeners say about The Passenger

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  • Overall
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    4 out of 5 stars

a master word smith

Cormac McCarthy is one of the greatest creator's of sentence that has ever lived. He is a master of descriptive sparse prose that evokes your imagination like few can or will. This is the case in this book, even if it lacks a precise story structure or character progression the narration is spot on fantastic, highly recommended.

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3 people found this helpful

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Meditative

I wouldn’t recommend this to any of my friends but I loved it so much.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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The undeniable beauty of McCormac’s rhythm

Andrews and Whelan capture the undeniable beauty and power of McCormac’s rhythm. I read the book and listen to the audible interchangeably,and reading the same passages I realised Andrews interpreted some things slightly differently. A matter of nuance and cadence. Wonderful.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

A curious and challenging book

It sounds shallow to say it, but if this wasn’t a Cormac McCarthy book I would struggle with it. Firstly, the performances are first rate and the writing is superb, as expected from McCarthy. The plot however is challenging to say the least. So much so that I don’t have a burning desire to listen to the companion to this book when it’s published shortly, which saddens me as I’ve loved everything that McCarthy has written.

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2 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars

Passenger to nowhere

I'm a huge McCarthy fan and liked this book, however it is not even a shadow of The Road and others. Biggest gripe were the conversations that go nowhere, just lots of "i don't know" and "no i don't" to the point that i was begging for conversations to just come to an end. If people actually conversed like that we'd still be living in caves.
This is an extremely self indulgent book that a writer as great as McCarthy has probably earnt the right to create as his last work

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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A haunting tale of regret

In his last days Cormac delivers a novel so intelligent and insightful it makes the thought of the world losing him and his speculation intolerable. I hope on the day of my death I can see his writings again and I can carry that beauty into the dark. The last pagan on earth softly singing upon his pallet in an unknown tongue.

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  • Overall
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Well worth the listen

A great book with complex characters. Hard to maintain focus in the audio version sometimes.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Smart but odd

If you like a plot driven novel you probably won’t like this one. It includes some intelligent ramblings by the main character and his acquaintances on everything from physics to JFK, and conversations between a woman and her hallucinations, but the story goes nowhere and it was really hard to sympathise with any of the characters, especially the protagonist. There was something very “life sucks and then you die” about it, and something very male, hard to put my finger on what that quality is, but when I said this to someone else they heartily agreed.

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6 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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strange. compelling.

as so many reviews say, the story seems unresolved. however the existential angst is vintage Mccarthy and the characters are fascinating. I'm still puzzling over it, so I guess it did it's job!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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The truth lies a few re-reads deep

This is an outstanding recording of the penultimate Cormac McCarthy book. I’m going to do a full spoilers review on Goodreads because this book is amazing.

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