The Passenger & Stella Maris: Boxed Set

(Note that this is only a review of The Passenger; if Stella Maris is so much worse, as reliable critics have stated, it may be some time before I read it).Buying the boxed set has a number of advantages: it has handy ribbon bookmarks, looks good on the shelf and usefully has a blank 15 pages where the reader can complete the book in the style of McCarthy in order to solve the puzzle set up in the opening, which the author himself does not deign to do.However, while reading I found myself wishing I'd bought the Kindle edition, since there are many arcane words requiring immediate access to a dictionary, and characters who pop up again many pages later than their first appearance, for whom thumbing through a physical book is no substitute for an onboard search engine when trying to recall who they are.I also was wishing I was instead reading the magnificent Border Trilogy again, along with its coda No Country for Old Men. This is not to say that The Passenger is badly written: there is nothing better than McCarthy's unique style that captures the nuts and bolts of both machines and human existence; and in brilliantly capturing nature in words, notably in the universe above us, he has few literary rivals. His descriptions of the moon, for example, in all its variations are perhaps without equal. Irritated as I was by the plotting - rambling is perhaps more accurate - of this novel, the writing, despite occasionally recording unrealistic conversations, held this reader's attention, though bolstered in truth by a dwindling hope of story resolution.The progression of the novel is in fact a retreat: the protagonist, pursued by unseen and perhaps nonexistent enemies, goes on the lam from the locked room setup and, wandering all of the place, even as far as Ibiza, becomes a bum, closely followed by the author as a kind of a stalking literary bum. Thence we are treated to a series of bewilderingly eclectic dialogues: on the atom bomb, string theory, the precognizance of babies, the Kennedy assassination, digital currency and a ragbag of other stuff. His discussion of quantum physics has the effect not of elucidation, but of making the subject even more baffling to the layperson. Despite all this McCarthy, despite his longevity and its accompanying knowledge, seems to have developed no coherent overarching philosophy of life.Moreover, much of what happens (such as it does happen) is, to use McCarthy's oft-repeated word, 'gray'. What isn't, curiously, is the minor trans character Debussy, who pops up like a pantomime demon and spreads colour whenever she's on the page.More significantly there is a plethora of unpleasant talking hallucinations orchestrated by a character known as The Thalidomide Kid who (geddit) does a lot of kidding. The opening page features the discovery of a young suicide, and we are soon treated to mental aberrations from her point of view, these threading themselves through the work and encroaching from time to time on the parallel story. I believe Stella Maris elaborates on this. Here, once everything inconsequential is stripped away, the Alicia tale is what gives The Passenger its real theme, not one on which, it must be said, many readers would care to dwell.In the end I was glad when the book stopped. Is it such a postmodernist sin to shape a novel for the satisfaction of the reader? The author does it elsewhere. And why not end your literary career with a cracking tour de force? McCarthy's track record has proved his capability of this time and again, but for some reason he decides not to do it with The Passenger.

I havnt read the books yet, im sure they're wonderful... however I am a little confused as to why this slipcase version of the two books is £43.75, when you can purchase them together for £30..... Is it because im a rube that pre-ordered? Is the slipcase really £13.75? Get the books... i just cant recommend this bundle.

Ik bestelde deze box set van 2 boeken en kreeg: slechts 1 van de 2 boeken uit de box set, beschadigd. Kom op… echt slecht!