Review
An appealing piece of work . . . gripping, with plenty of reflection and evocation - The Daily Telegraph
The Passenger is like a submerged ship itself; a gorgeous ruin in the shape of a hardboiled noir thriller . . . What a glorious sunset song . . . It’s rich and it’s strange, mercurial and melancholic - The Guardian
A moving and characteristically disconcerting addition to the oeuvre of one of America’s greatest writers - The Irish Times
Critics have detected the influence on him of Faulkner and Hemingway, but this is to understate his achievement. The Passenger shows that McCarthy belongs in the company of Melville and Dostoevsky, writers the world will never cease to need - New Statesman
[A] gripping story, written in McCarthy’s trademark acerbic style - i newspaper
Kafka on the bayou - Observer
Magisterial - Financial Times
McCarthy’s formidable talents for dialogue, perfect sentences and descriptions of the natural world remain undiminished - The Times
The Passenger also happens to be something of a masterpiece… It is [McCarthy’s] most ambitious work. - TIME
The novels McCarthy published in 2022, at the age of 89, permanently resolve the question of whether McCarthy is a great novelist… together the books are the richest and strongest work of McCarthy’s career - The Atlantic
An intellectual experience that’s not quite like anything else out there, laced with the eerie beauty that only Cormac McCarthy can offer. - Vox
In Stella Maris and The Passenger, McCarthy invites us to consider hopelessness not just to give us hope but to compel us to make use of it. Having lived for nearly 100 years, he has given us what may well be the last great novels of the long 20th century. He may also help point us in a different direction for the twenty-first. - The Nation
About the Author
Cormac McCarthy was the author of many acclaimed novels, including Blood Meridian, Child of God and The Passenger. Among his honours are the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His works adapted to film include All the Pretty Horses, The Road and No Country for Old Men – the latter film receiving four Academy Awards, including the award for Best Picture. McCarthy died in 2023 in Santa Fe, NM at the age of 89.