✨DNF✨ The Passenger

  

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: The Passenger

Author: Cormac McCarthy

Publisher: Knopf

Release Date: 12.6.22

Publisher’s Summary 

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.

My Review

The Road had me flipping pages wide-eyed, with the experience setting me off on a post-apocalyptic reading spree for about a decade, so I was so excited when Knopf offered me a review copy of Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger. A diver investigates a crashed jet with nine bodies inside but "missing from the crash site are the pilot’s flightbag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger." Sounds like a great mystery, right? Then why are the opening pages totally unrelated to this storyline? I'm sure it would all circle back and it's to develop this character but it just made no sense--which I can see is the point to show this character's state of mind. Yet, I trudged on for a couple more chapters (who knows because while there are page breaks to indicate a new chapter, there are no chapter numbers.) I found myself zoning out or my eyes skimming the page even after putting this down and returning to it several times, so I've decided to DNF but I could see myself circling back to this. I'm not totally writing it off.