- Title
- The Passenger
- Author
- Cormac McCarthy
- Format
- Print, then Audio
This book is a minor miracle. (As I often do with a book this good, I read it in print and listened to the auido-book back to back.) It is just as beautiful and introspective as McCarthy’s best books, with fewer pretensions. (I find it interesting that McCarthy and Richard Powers—both men of immense linguistic ability—toned down the literary pretense as they aged, and perhaps got better for it.)
If you’re a plot person, this book may infuriate you. But I love its bold willingness to refuse to answer any story question, while trying along the way to answer so many things unanswerable.
Mercy is the province of the person alone. There is mass hatred and there is mass grief. Mass vengeance and even mass suicide. But there is no mass forgiveness. There is only you.