RaveTimeStaggering ... Narratively speaking, the book is more interested in expanding the scope of its own mystery than in solving it ... Don’t come here for a thriller about a plane crash, but the pages do turn with remarkable ease. From the initial mystery of a missing person, the novel explodes outward like an atomic chain reaction to the very face of God, at the intersection of mathematics and faith ... Is this sounding like a lot? It is. The Passenger also happens to be something of a masterpiece, an unsolvable equation left up on the blackboard for the bold to puzzle over ... It is his most ambitious work, or perhaps a better word would be weirdest. But it’s held together with wit and chuckle-out-loud humor, which can be sparse in his other novels ... And it’s genuinely fun to read throughout ... It makes sense that at this stage in his career, the author would push in his chips and attempt to understand the mechanical clockwork of reality itself.
