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smithjasont01 's review for:
The Passenger
by Cormac McCarthy
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
"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."
I dont know how McCarthy does what he does so well. In a book with the loosest of plots, he gets across so much and asks so much.
The biggest of the book is how does one move on with their life after they realize the love that they are striving for can never be gotten. For Bobby, our protagonist, this is his younger sister who has since committed suicide after spending time dealing with schizophrenia. He fell head over heels in love knowing he could never have her. After her death he becomes a passenger in life, not caring how he lives, how he might die, and everything else.
The whole book is just conversations Bobby has with himself or friends, and each chapter is prefaced with his sister talking to her other personalities. Through these conversations we see other people in his life and how they are dealing with similar things. One of these friends is this incredibly gorgeous woman who we learn is actually a trans woman. She wants the love of her mother, and after confronting her learns she will never get it back. After nearly drinking herself to death she comes to a realization that she wouldn't be here if someone didn't love her, and that is how she moved on. We also see close to the end a Spanish man who just wants the love of his friends back after both them and himself were shot in a firing line during the Civil war but somehow he managed to survive but they didn't.
There is so much more to this book, there is a whole bit that compares Bobby Kennedy trying desperately to hold his family together, to our Bobby. There is a whole bunch of scientific related themes regarding their dad, a scientist who worked on the atom bomb, and so much more. People will be finding things about this book for a long time to come.
Overall just an amazing work from McCarthy.
I dont know how McCarthy does what he does so well. In a book with the loosest of plots, he gets across so much and asks so much.
The biggest of the book is how does one move on with their life after they realize the love that they are striving for can never be gotten. For Bobby, our protagonist, this is his younger sister who has since committed suicide after spending time dealing with schizophrenia. He fell head over heels in love knowing he could never have her. After her death he becomes a passenger in life, not caring how he lives, how he might die, and everything else.
The whole book is just conversations Bobby has with himself or friends, and each chapter is prefaced with his sister talking to her other personalities. Through these conversations we see other people in his life and how they are dealing with similar things. One of these friends is this incredibly gorgeous woman who we learn is actually a trans woman. She wants the love of her mother, and after confronting her learns she will never get it back. After nearly drinking herself to death she comes to a realization that she wouldn't be here if someone didn't love her, and that is how she moved on. We also see close to the end a Spanish man who just wants the love of his friends back after both them and himself were shot in a firing line during the Civil war but somehow he managed to survive but they didn't.
There is so much more to this book, there is a whole bit that compares Bobby Kennedy trying desperately to hold his family together, to our Bobby. There is a whole bunch of scientific related themes regarding their dad, a scientist who worked on the atom bomb, and so much more. People will be finding things about this book for a long time to come.
Overall just an amazing work from McCarthy.