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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Audio, narrators were great
Content was... compelling until it just turned to upsetting. I have no idea how to rate this book.
Content was... compelling until it just turned to upsetting. I have no idea how to rate this book.
It would be interesting to read this first, possibly. Although it certainly mirrors The Passenger, the ending is known via that book—so it could be fun going in not knowing that. Though, this book has less of a plot than it, so I can see why Passenger was chosen to go first.
Both are cerebral and melancholic, which feels on brand for McCarthy. This one is purely audio recordings between the main character and a therapist, and that’s about it. If you are looking for something plotty, don’t pick it up. Probably, you know this already from The Passenger, but just in case. While that book has conversations about science, this is basically only that. There’s no physicality or interiority. Expect only dialogue.
She is an outlier, just like Bobby, though far more singular because of the mental facilities she has available. The cohort, or mental constructs, are much more elucidated in this, as you’d expect. But again, themes about how society isn’t constructed for outliers, and the metrics aren’t useable or useful when applied to people like her. And yet, from what we are aware of now, if society was constructed by people like that, it would be far better, because designing even for accessibility has provided immeasurable positive changes. Instead, we have what we have. The information design around branches of science is really well done. I don’t know anything about them and felt like I was getting it. And the “story” is the Why of what we already know she has done, from The Passenger. Which is why I was saying it would be interesting to have read this first.
Both are cerebral and melancholic, which feels on brand for McCarthy. This one is purely audio recordings between the main character and a therapist, and that’s about it. If you are looking for something plotty, don’t pick it up. Probably, you know this already from The Passenger, but just in case. While that book has conversations about science, this is basically only that. There’s no physicality or interiority. Expect only dialogue.
She is an outlier, just like Bobby, though far more singular because of the mental facilities she has available. The cohort, or mental constructs, are much more elucidated in this, as you’d expect. But again, themes about how society isn’t constructed for outliers, and the metrics aren’t useable or useful when applied to people like her. And yet, from what we are aware of now, if society was constructed by people like that, it would be far better, because designing even for accessibility has provided immeasurable positive changes. Instead, we have what we have. The information design around branches of science is really well done. I don’t know anything about them and felt like I was getting it. And the “story” is the Why of what we already know she has done, from The Passenger. Which is why I was saying it would be interesting to have read this first.
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Reading all of Cormac McCarthy's novels isn't a project I've ever signed onto, but I don't know why. I've at least liked and often loved every book I've ever read by him. And, as projects go, it's a very achievable one. In his fifty-seven years as a novelist, he wrote only a dozen novels, a few of them, Stella Maris included, quite short. In any case, with this book, I'm now half-way toward a goal I've never really signed onto.
I picked Stella Maris primarily because it's short, because it was the last novel McCarthy published before his death (June 13, 2023), because it happened to be available in Libby through the local library, and because I've always trusted McCarthy to deliver something beautiful and thought provoking. He never misses on that count, In my experience.
In my head, I categorize McCarthy's novels into a few stylistic categories. There are the novels that remind me of Faulkner and Melville, like [b:Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West|394535|Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West|Cormac McCarthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1701688704l/394535._SY75_.jpg|1065465], there are the books that remind me of Hemingway, like [b:No Country for Old Men|23515727|No Country for Old Men|Cormac McCarthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1426559863l/23515727._SY75_.jpg|2996445], and there are the more lyrical ones, which I like less than those in the other two categories, like [b:All the Pretty Horses|469571|All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)|Cormac McCarthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1706386113l/469571._SY75_.jpg|1907621]. I think Stella Maris, which I finished just before I wrote this, crosses those first two categories a bit. You get some complexity of language and a bit of a prophetic tone, at times, and a stripped down, beautiful minimalism at others.
I can't say much about Stella Maris without spoiling it. The entire book is a dialog between a woman and her psychiatrist. The woman, who has admitted herself to the facility where, we assume, the conversations take place, was once a mathematician and has an interest in the philosophy of mathematics and with philosophy in general. At times, her responses to her doctor's prompts are thick with mathematical concepts and references to real-life mathematicians and philosophers. Other times, we learn a bit about her personal life. The doctor's responses are mostly short, often something as simple as "what else?" There are moments in the dialog that are quite beautiful.
I picked Stella Maris primarily because it's short, because it was the last novel McCarthy published before his death (June 13, 2023), because it happened to be available in Libby through the local library, and because I've always trusted McCarthy to deliver something beautiful and thought provoking. He never misses on that count, In my experience.
In my head, I categorize McCarthy's novels into a few stylistic categories. There are the novels that remind me of Faulkner and Melville, like [b:Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West|394535|Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West|Cormac McCarthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1701688704l/394535._SY75_.jpg|1065465], there are the books that remind me of Hemingway, like [b:No Country for Old Men|23515727|No Country for Old Men|Cormac McCarthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1426559863l/23515727._SY75_.jpg|2996445], and there are the more lyrical ones, which I like less than those in the other two categories, like [b:All the Pretty Horses|469571|All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)|Cormac McCarthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1706386113l/469571._SY75_.jpg|1907621]. I think Stella Maris, which I finished just before I wrote this, crosses those first two categories a bit. You get some complexity of language and a bit of a prophetic tone, at times, and a stripped down, beautiful minimalism at others.
I can't say much about Stella Maris without spoiling it. The entire book is a dialog between a woman and her psychiatrist. The woman, who has admitted herself to the facility where, we assume, the conversations take place, was once a mathematician and has an interest in the philosophy of mathematics and with philosophy in general. At times, her responses to her doctor's prompts are thick with mathematical concepts and references to real-life mathematicians and philosophers. Other times, we learn a bit about her personal life. The doctor's responses are mostly short, often something as simple as "what else?" There are moments in the dialog that are quite beautiful.
Spoiler
I'm not sure that the novel adds up to anything. In fact, I'd say that it doesn't. But I'd also say that's the point and very much in keeping with McCarthy's view of things, which you could call nihilism, but you could also call his honest assessment, following Wittgenstein, who is mentioned a few times in the novel, that “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
challenging
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is going to take a while to digest. Come back to me in a few days
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A fitting final statement from a master writer; a short companion piece to his penultimate novel, The Passenger. A series of dialogues between a brilliant paranoid schizophrenic mathematician (sister of the protagonist from The Passenger) and her shrink, a thoughtful stand-in for the audience.
This is a tragic story of an amazing woman whose soul and intellect burn so bright, but who is simply too sick to survive. It’s the story of the human condition, expressed in a series of Socratic dialogues.
There was a passage about the cries of babies making no sense, in terms of evolutionary biology. (Helpless creatures usually keep their mouths shut.) The speaker, Alicia, says they must be crying out of rage at injustice, and that they only quiet down when their frustrated rage cools to sorrow.
This is a tragic story of an amazing woman whose soul and intellect burn so bright, but who is simply too sick to survive. It’s the story of the human condition, expressed in a series of Socratic dialogues.
There was a passage about the cries of babies making no sense, in terms of evolutionary biology. (Helpless creatures usually keep their mouths shut.) The speaker, Alicia, says they must be crying out of rage at injustice, and that they only quiet down when their frustrated rage cools to sorrow.
There is also an incredible passage about the pre-linguistic nature of the pure unconscious, and how it was overwhelmed and conquered by the virus of language, of semiotics, of algebraic-poetic thinking, of this-standing-for-that. Of consciousness.
You can tell McCarthy’s time among scientific geniuses at the Santa Fe Institute rubbed off on him, to the profit of his dialogue for, and characterization of, Alicia, his greatest character since Jusge Holden. How do you write a genius? You’d have to be a genius.
This brief coda deepens and completes Bobby’s story from The Passenger, while surpassing it in literary merit.
What a way to go out.
You can tell McCarthy’s time among scientific geniuses at the Santa Fe Institute rubbed off on him, to the profit of his dialogue for, and characterization of, Alicia, his greatest character since Jusge Holden. How do you write a genius? You’d have to be a genius.
This brief coda deepens and completes Bobby’s story from The Passenger, while surpassing it in literary merit.
What a way to go out.
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I was hoping Stella Maris would provide more context or nuance to The Passenger, but what I got was largely the same; a largely pointless story that goes nowhere and seems to be just a vehicle for McCarthy's dissertation on 20th century mathematics and physics. Stella Maris gets a few more points for being a more daring format and somehow more readable than The Passenger, but it still suffers from many of the same issues. This one was at least nice and short, but it reads like a long, one-sided conversation with the most insufferable person you know. Just like the passenger, the main character is also effortlessly beautiful, genius, and magnetic. These are things that Cormac McCarthy tells us about the characters, but I found it to be irritating and not really believable. I don't find people who dominate conversations, shoehorn pointless screeds, and humble-brag about their "intelligence" while trying to remain painfully aloof particularly interesting.
Though, just like The Passenger, I feel like there is something that will stick with me about Stella Maris, and despite how painful of a read both of them are, I'm sure I will revisit both books and perhaps change my mind.
Though, just like The Passenger, I feel like there is something that will stick with me about Stella Maris, and despite how painful of a read both of them are, I'm sure I will revisit both books and perhaps change my mind.