Book Club - Vijay Khurana’s The Passenger Seat

Vijay Khurana is a writer and translator from German. His debut novel, The Passenger Seat, was shortlisted for the Novel Prize. Content warning for mentions of violence. On the verge of their final year of high school, Adam and Teddy are looking for adventure. On a whim they pack some camping gear and drive north. Adam’s got a drivers license and a truck. Teddy has a gun license and on their way out of town the boys stop at a camping goods store and buy a rifle. They’re not sure what they’ll encounter in the wild but they want to be prepared for anything. Teddy’s family don’t seem too fussed by the whole affair and he isn’t sure whether his girlfriend will miss him. It’s no0t that serious and he doubts they’ll even be a couple when he gets back Adam’s dad’s weirdly gotten worse since he stopped drinking. Teddy may be talking about school but Adam’s plan only points in one direction, and he has no intention of ever returning. The Passenger Seat begins with Adam and Teddy egging each other on to jump off the bridge outside their town. In this moment they are exploring the ways they can both push, and rely on each other. A sudden jolt before he is ready and Teddy is furious at Adam as he hurtles towards the water, only to emerge triumphant, laughing at his friend beside him. In this moment neither they, nor the reader suspect what is to come for them. They are simply two boys, or perhaps young men trying to understand their place in the world. Their road trip begins as all road trips begin, full of promise and the expectation that what comes next is unpredictable. We ride alongside Adam and Teddy, sleeping in the cramped tray of the truck and wondering exactly when they plan on washing. The titular passenger seat working as both a metaphor for who is in control, and a reminder of how uncomfortably close we are to the two in their self imposed exile. Now about now I’m going to acknowledge that I’m glossing over some events in the novel. This inflection point changes the journey for Adam and Teddy and forces both the boys and the reader to wonder exactly where the story could possibly go from here. Adam and Teddy’s journey is remarkable simply because it need not be remarkable. Khurana uses the everyman disaffection of the two boys to offer up a perfectly innocuous trip that spirals out of control. At a certain point we are privy to Adam’s gleeful reflection that when people come searching for answers their story will be devastatingly inscrutable. I found The Passenger Seat to be one of those genuinely unputdownable books. Much like the boys trip it takes on its own momentum and refused to let me go as I devoured it in a weekend.  If I go too much into themes I run the risk of spoilers but I will say that it engages somewhat topically with the broader social conversation around young men and the forces that compel them in their actions.  In this Teddy and Adam’s story is juxtaposed with a vignette of a seemingly minor character in the aftermath of the road trip. The two stories are seemingly disparate but highlight the same sense of control or relinquishing of one’s control that underscores so much of what makes male behaviour unconscionable. The Passenger Seat by Vijay Khurana is a tremendous novel; timely and urgent. Read it now and I suspect you’ll be ahead of the conversation to come as this book gathers momentum.