The Passenger

De: Cormac McCarthy

Narrado por: MacLeod Andrews, Julia Whelan

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The first of a two-volume masterpiece, The Passenger series, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Road • The story of a salvage diver, haunted by loss, afraid of the watery deep, pursued for a conspiracy beyond his understanding, and longing for a death he cannot reconcile with God.

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

"Blends the rowdy humor of some of McCarthy’s early novels with the parched tone of his more apocalyptic later work." —The New York Times

Stella Maris, the second volume in The Passenger series, is available now.

1980, PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from the Coast Guard tender into darkness. His dive light 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 flight bag, 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 barrooms 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.

©2022 Cormac McCarthy (P)2022 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NEW YORK TIMES • GOODREADS • KIRKUS

CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE NOMINEE

“A total banger…[The Passenger] blends the rowdy humor of some of McCarthy’s early novels with the parched tone of his more apocalyptic later work. It’s the first novel I’ve read in years that I feel I need to read three more times to fully understand, and that I want to read three more times simply to savor. It’s so packed with funny, strange, haunted sentences that other writers will be stealing lines from it for epigraphs, as if it were Ecclesiastes, for the next 150 years….The whole thing reads like a cosmic, bleakly funny John D. MacDonald thriller…The Passenger is a great New Orleans novel. It’s a great food novel…For anyone who cares, it’s also a great Knoxville novel—Knoxville being where McCarthy spent most of his childhood. It’s filled with references to his earlier work...A sprawling book of ideas."–Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“A brilliant book… A stunning accomplishment…McCarthy turns his substantial writerly gifts upon two distinct forces: the mechanical and the theoretical. He attends to the exquisite detail of Bobby’s physical world—the sounds and feel of an oil rig in a storm, the touch and clunk of a cigarette machine in a bar, the step-by-step process of removing a bathroom cabinet or digging up and carting off buried treasure…It’s Cormac McCarthy writing as only Cormac McCarthy can.”–Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times

“McCarthy has assembled all the chilling ingredients of a locked-room mystery. But he leaps outside the boundaries of that antique form, just as he reworked the apocalypse in The Road… Western knows he’s suspected of something, but he’s not told what. The two men who repeatedly question him never drop their formal politeness—never flash a bolt gun like Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men—but Western knows that his life is in danger and that he must run… The style—a mingling of profound contemplation and rapid-fire dialogue, always without quotation marks and often without attribution—is pure McCarthy.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

McCarthy dealing w/ Mortality, Paranoia

Best Parts?
Hearing McCarthy describe Nagasaki, String Theory and his conspiracy-fueled discussion on JFK's assassination is but the beginning of the vast treasures this book imparts. Can't wait to read 2nd Volume for more. Possibly most stoic character McCarthy ever wrote but there's something beautiful & almost fatalistic to this gorgeously stark novel.

This is how a master writes

All concerned: This is a master. This is how a master writes. Pay attention. Haha

Brilliant writing, great performance

The same brilliant writing seen in The Road. The story is perhaps less engaging, less immediate, more retrospective and thought provoking. All and all a joy to read/listen to.

Captivating but frustrating

Very good reader, but the story is full of gratuitously quirky characters, annoying hallucinations, and needless dead-ends.

Brilliant but not perfect

The story was very compelling with many dimensions. The language was exquisite in true McCarthy fashion. Many ubiquitous memorable quotes and sayings true to life. My only issue is there were so many unanswered questions. Perhaps they didn’t all need to be answered but personally I would have liked a little more. Highly recommended!

Not much in the way of story, but rich thematically

If you’re looking for an interesting story, this ain’t it. I mean, there is a story, but much of it is comprised of arcs that don’t really go to any real destination more than illustrate some sort of deeper theme. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll enjoy it. I know I sound like I’m dogging on it, but once I figured out how to take it in, I began to find it interesting and it got me thinking about some very deep concepts about life, death, and existence in general. I just may have realized that too late. I don’t always have the greatest attention span for excessive wordiness, and McCarthy definitely has a unique style of writing that takes some getting used to. Sometimes a character would go off on a diatribe that makes you wonder what it has to do with anything, and if you’re not careful, you’ll miss something thematically important. The story itself wasn’t anything that special, but it got me interested enough that I may give it another shot one of these days. Maybe I’ll pick up on a lot that I’ve missed and have nicer things to say.

First Cormac McCarthy book I did not finish.

As someone who thinks Cormac McCarthy is one of the best authors I have ever read, I was disappointed with this book. I am reluctant to criticize the author because he is one of my favorites, but this book seemed to me to be a series of beautifully written character studies that had little cohesion as a story. Variety is the spice, and I'm sure I am in a minority as one who did not care for this particular book.

Patience helps

It took me some listening to grasp what really goes on. Interesting and unusual book. Now I will have to read/ listen all of his books.

Structural genius and dry to boot

Personally I like how much history he jams into these people’s unpunctuated mouths. To that end, these books probably work even better as audiobooks. True of Blood Meridian, too.

Great narration

I love the narration and the writing, but I found the story very hard to follow. I think, for me may be reading it would be better…