Passenger (1979) is a novel by Australian writer Thomas Keneally.
Contents
Abstract
The narrator of this novel is a foetus in utero, who watches the outside world through his mother's eyes. He observes the break-up of his parents' marriage, his mother's incarceration in a mental hospital, and her eventual escape and travel to Australia, where he is born.
Dedication
"To Trish Sheppard and Iain Findlay".
Critical reception
In the Canberra Times Hope Hewitt was a little annoyed with the main character: "In practice it provides a novel excuse for the oldest of narrative conventions: the omniscient narrator. It also provides for a variation on the Romantic notion of the wise child; and I confess that there were moments when the little man became so polysyllabically philosophical or his creator so cutely whimsical that I found myself wishing the brat would remain unborn...But apart from a few irritations with the conventions of the fantasy, Passenger is an entertaining book, with its constant changes of scene and its unexpected uses of language."
Publication history
After its original publication in 1979 by Collins, the novel was published as follows:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, USA, 1978
Fontana, UK, 1980