Book 285: The Passenger

31/03/2024

Book 285: The Passenger

Book Club notes 27 02 2024 – ‘The Passenger’ – Cormac McCarthy.  Notes by Maureen. Simon P and Helen P did not attend.

A quick synopsis: Both ‘The Passenger’ and ‘Stella Maris’, which the club will read next month, follow the lives of Bobby and Alicia Western, siblings whose father helped develop the atomic bomb. Bobby and his sister Alicia, who are very close, are both highly intelligent, especially in the area of mathematics. Alicia also has schizophrenia and hallucinations which taunt her and she ultimately commits suicide.  Bobby is haunted by his sister’s death.

Bobby is a salvage diver, one of a crew that attended an accident where a plane has crashed into the sea. One passenger and the black box are missing, and Bobby is visited by government agents who then confiscate his car, freeze his bank accounts, and ultimately he is left destitute and alone.

Simon H: felt the book was both very humorous and terribly sad at the same time.  He felt the Bobby, the protagonist, was a tragic figure who was doomed from the start. The plane crash incident, which he attended in his role as a salvage diver, led to the loss of control over his life and in effect, finished it. Simon liked the interesting range of characters – for example Kline, who was in a way a vehicle to get through to Bobby how dire his situation was and how there was no way out. Simon found the story poignant and thought-provoking.

Helen B: also enjoyed the book and felt it was very well written. She found it very sad and also very funny at times, and the left-field characters.

She thought the book was an indictment on the US and how paranoid the country seems to be now as well as in the past eg McCarthyism and the treatment of Oppenheimer; and the conspiracy theories and hounding of individuals. She felt the author had fictionalised his own experience. She also suspected that, given McCarthy was dying and this would be some of his last work, that he had just included everything he could, hence the long passages on obscure subjects.

Jane: struggled to read the book.  She felt that it went down a lot of rabbit holes (eg the significance of the antique violin the sister had bought?) and that there were elements of madness.  She felt unease about the nature of Bobby’s relationship with his sister.  

Charlie: commented on the many sections detailing Alicia’s complex and unusual hallucinations and the idea that he was able to share these hallucinations with her brother. (MR note: he also made a comment about plutonic mathematics and no room for constructs that I didn’t understand Helen mentioned the McCarthy Institute?). 

Karen: wanted something resolved and said the way the hallucinations were portrayed was not believable.

Judith: felt the book was very self-indulgent eg the long sections on quantum mechanics and other scientific concepts, which she believed did not add to the story.  She felt McCarthy is not skilful when writing about women and these parts did not ring true.  She also felt the story suffered from the lack of punctuation, making it difficult to differentiate which character was speaking.  She also said that the long passages of prose in italics was hard to read and grated on her.

Brigitte: thought the author had tried to incorporate too many ideas and directions, with nothing resolved.  She also struggled with the lack of punctuation. Overall, the book left her cold.

Mark: thought the book had a great opening but, unlike other McCarthy works, it did not have a powerful voice to sustain the narrative. In his view the wheels fell off and the story was ‘2^nd division McCarthy’, not in the same leagues as previous books and characters. He did appreciate the great landscapes that the author painted through the book but was otherwise very disappointed.

Maureen: felt like she was drowning when reading this book.  There were so many characters, themes and long convoluted passages on quantum physics and other complex topics which she felt added nothing to the book. She commented that a number of McCarthy’s books had been turned into successful films but this one had such a meandering story that it was be no mean feat.

Scores:

Brigitte – 6

Charlie – 7

Mark – 5

Karen – 5

Judith – 5

Jane – 6

Simon – 8

Helen – 8

Maureen – 5

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