It’s been 16 years since Cormac McCarthy published The Road and seven more since this new novel was first officially announced. So peculiar is his latest work that it’s unclear how many readers will find the rewards worth the wait.
The events of The Passehger are set in motion by a crew of salvage divers investigating a submerged plane with no discernible damage and containing one dead passenger fewer than on the flight manifest. From this day on, our protagonist, Bobby Western, becomes ensnared in a conspiracy whose author and ends elude his understanding.
Interspersed with his increasingly desperate attempts to evade the agents of this conspiracy are a sequence of dialogues between Western and his eccentric acquaintances, through which we learn that he is the son of an atomic scientist who helped develop the bomb and that he is inconsolably in love with his younger sister Alicia, a maths prodigy who died several years ago. But undoubtedly the strangest scenes in the novel are those in which Alicia converses with a troupe of hallucinatory entertainers, who by turns taunt and comfort her in her isolation.
Its plot might make The Passenger sound a more raucous and convoluted work than it really is. In fact, it is among McCarthy’s most quietly reflective novels, recalling the moments of serenity amid scenes of devastation that made The Road so haunting. The conspiracy plotline is ultimately a backdrop that serves to illuminate the portrait of unremitting grief beyond all hope of attenuation that lies at the novel’s heart.
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In late works, authors often double down on their stylistic predilections — think the crazed multilingual puns of Finnegans Wake. By contrast, in The Passenger, sleeker prose and a preponderance of dialogue displace the darkly sensuous lyricism for which McCarthy is renowned. The ebb and flow of spare economy and lyrical intoxication undoubtedly lends the most rhapsodic passages a poignancy unusual even by McCarthy’s standards. At the same time, it’s difficult not to miss the sustained intensity of a masterpiece such as Blood Meridian.
The Passenger is nevertheless a moving and characteristically disconcerting addition to the oeuvre of one of America’s greatest writers. Those hungry for more McCarthy won’t have long to wait — a sequel is due out next month.
