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Lead book review

A sunken wreck of a novel: Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger reviewed

A promising plot about a mysterious plane crash is lost in rambling meditations on psychosis, string theory and JFK’s assassination

19 November 2022

9:00 AM

19 November 2022

9:00 AM

The Passenger Cormac McCarthy

Picador, pp.400, 20

Stella Maris Cormac McCarthy

Picador, pp.192, 20

Is Cormac McCarthy among the last generation of novelists to possess a Style? Of course all writers have a characteristic style, however unassuming; but not many these days have a Style in the grand manner, the sort that Kingsley Amis (I think writing about Nabokov) described as a high level of flutter and wow.

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