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3.87 AVERAGE
3.87 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-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 really loved this odd companion piece to McCarthy's The Passenger. Told entirely in dialogue between psychiatrist and client (the title refers to the name of an asylum), Stella Maris focuses on Alicia Wester, the sister of Bobby Western, the protagonist of The Passenger. While I suppose you could read it on its own, Stella Maris works best an as addendum to that earlier novel -- knowing Alicia's fate and a key detail about her relationship with her brother (both revealed in The Passenger) are key. Still, there is much here to fascinate: Alicia is a brilliant subject with a staggering knowledge of higher mathematics and physics. Hard not to pity any analyst who tries to keep up with her in session.
I thought this would make the mysteries left behind by The Passenger clearer. Instead it made everything more confusing, which honestly I should have expected. Nonetheless this really creates a complete work of art besides its companion novel, and will stand as the enigmatic swan song of a recently lost author. Creating an entire book that's just two people talking is definitely a risk, but it pays off because the way Alicia and Dr. Cohen speak is poetic yet believable. At some point I will have to read this and The Passenger again, hopefully back-to-back, in order to further understand the meaning between them.
An impenetrable, heady observation of human (in)sanity as a person feels themself begin to circle the drain.
emotional
reflective
12th book of 2023.
A novel, yes, but really a transcript for 200 pages. There's not a single scene description. Occasionally a character offers a cigarette to the other, lights one, but almost every word in this book is dialogue. No tags. No speech marks. All McCarthy.
Looking at the two books now together, I like the structure. I like that we read things here without context but we know, as readers, the context, having read the book before. Which is, so to speak, the book after, chronologically. After a long and golden career, McCarthy plays on the old classic dramatic irony. Not only does the ending of this book leave lots of questions unanswered, it actually gives more answered questions. One of the main ones I have I won't put here, being a spoiler of sorts. It's left me thoughtful. Would I read them both again? Maybe one day. As for all my questions and thoughts: I'll write a spoiler-covered review of both books and get some thoughts flowing there. As for this one, short and sweet. Being a dialogue only book, you can read it in a few hours.
The Passenger review.
Spoilerific Boxset review.
A novel, yes, but really a transcript for 200 pages. There's not a single scene description. Occasionally a character offers a cigarette to the other, lights one, but almost every word in this book is dialogue. No tags. No speech marks. All McCarthy.
Looking at the two books now together, I like the structure. I like that we read things here without context but we know, as readers, the context, having read the book before. Which is, so to speak, the book after, chronologically. After a long and golden career, McCarthy plays on the old classic dramatic irony. Not only does the ending of this book leave lots of questions unanswered, it actually gives more answered questions. One of the main ones I have I won't put here, being a spoiler of sorts. It's left me thoughtful. Would I read them both again? Maybe one day. As for all my questions and thoughts: I'll write a spoiler-covered review of both books and get some thoughts flowing there. As for this one, short and sweet. Being a dialogue only book, you can read it in a few hours.
The Passenger review.
Spoilerific Boxset review.
Cormac Mccarthy is such a beautiful writer. I didn't understand any of the math tho
June 13, 2023 Update RIP Cormac McCarthy (July 20, 1933 - June 13, 2023). Read an obituary at the Canadian CBC at Cormac McCarthy, bleak and brutal titan of American literature, dead at 89. Stella Maris becomes his final novel, unless something should be published posthumously.
I Am Become Death
Review of the Knopf Publishing hardcover (December 6, 2022)
Stella Maris [Latin: Star of the Sea, a female protector or guiding spirit at sea (a title sometimes given to the Virgin Mary)] is the name of the Psychiatric Institution into which Alicia Western checks herself at the start of this novel. There is an intake form on the first page and then the rest of the book consists of transcripts of the recorded conversations between Alicia and her therapist. It is thus entirely dialogue. The book takes place in 1972 and thus predates the 1981 events of the earlier book [b:The Passenger|60526801|The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)|Cormac McCarthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1647021401l/60526801._SX50_.jpg|58040703] (published October 2022). It was published later though, so in a sense if is both a prequel and a sequel.
Without the context of the earlier book, Stella Maris will probably seem very repetitive and slight. Alicia is of the genius stereotype edging into madness. You have the sense that she is toying with the therapist and only humouring him as a diversion. Often she lies in her answers but then admits the lie a moment later. She describes her history as a genius child who was already a doctoral candidate in mathematics in her teens. The conversations cover her encounters with other genius mathematicians and the history of her father's involvement on the Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb with Oppenheimer.
We do also learn that she spent time with her brother Bobby in Europe when he was injured in a racing accident. I may have missed something, but I had the impression that she believed Bobby to either be in a coma or have died. That did make me wonder whether the entire The Passenger book was then a fiction in her mind if Bobby (its main character) was not alive.
As I expected in my review of The Passenger, Stella Maris provides no further answers but only deepens the complications and mystery of the Alicia and Bobby Western story. It is just as obsessed with mathematics, physics, hallucinations, death and the possible annihilation of life through nuclear weapons. But I still enjoyed it for Alicia's gameplay and especially her occasional diversions about the construction of violins, about music, and about Johann Sebastian Bach.
Trivia and Links
In what seems like synchronicity, the teaser trailer for Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" (2023) was released on December 19, 2022 i.e. shortly after the release of both of Cormac McCarthy's Passenger novels. See it on YouTube here.
There is a combined article and review about Cormac McCarthy and the Passenger novels in The New Yorker magazine as Cormac McCarthy peers into the abyss by David Wood in the December 19, 2022 issue, which you can read for free if you have remaining free reads or are a subscriber. Thanks to Jessaka for the heads-up!
I Am Become Death
Review of the Knopf Publishing hardcover (December 6, 2022)
But anyone who doesnt understand that the Manhattan Project is one of the most significant events in human history hasnt been paying attention. It's up there with fire and language. It is at least number three and it may be number one. We just don't know yet. But we will. - Alicia Western in "Stella Maris".
And supposedly Oppenheimer quoted from the Bhagavad Gita but I think the Sanskrit word for Time came out Death or maybe the other way around. Or maybe they're the same. - Alicia Western in "Stella Maris".
Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds, and I have come here to destroy all people. - excerpt from [b:The Bhagavad Gita|99944|The Bhagavad Gita|Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1631634958l/99944._SX50_.jpg|1492580] Chapter 11 Verse 32.
Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. - quote from [a:J. Robert Oppenheimer|308544|J. Robert Oppenheimer|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1310777377p2/308544.jpg] as inspired by The Bhagavad Gita, after the successful testing of the first atomic bomb.
Stella Maris [Latin: Star of the Sea, a female protector or guiding spirit at sea (a title sometimes given to the Virgin Mary)] is the name of the Psychiatric Institution into which Alicia Western checks herself at the start of this novel. There is an intake form on the first page and then the rest of the book consists of transcripts of the recorded conversations between Alicia and her therapist. It is thus entirely dialogue. The book takes place in 1972 and thus predates the 1981 events of the earlier book [b:The Passenger|60526801|The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)|Cormac McCarthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1647021401l/60526801._SX50_.jpg|58040703] (published October 2022). It was published later though, so in a sense if is both a prequel and a sequel.
Without the context of the earlier book, Stella Maris will probably seem very repetitive and slight. Alicia is of the genius stereotype edging into madness. You have the sense that she is toying with the therapist and only humouring him as a diversion. Often she lies in her answers but then admits the lie a moment later. She describes her history as a genius child who was already a doctoral candidate in mathematics in her teens. The conversations cover her encounters with other genius mathematicians and the history of her father's involvement on the Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb with Oppenheimer.
We do also learn that she spent time with her brother Bobby in Europe when he was injured in a racing accident. I may have missed something, but I had the impression that she believed Bobby to either be in a coma or have died. That did make me wonder whether the entire The Passenger book was then a fiction in her mind if Bobby (its main character) was not alive.
As I expected in my review of The Passenger, Stella Maris provides no further answers but only deepens the complications and mystery of the Alicia and Bobby Western story. It is just as obsessed with mathematics, physics, hallucinations, death and the possible annihilation of life through nuclear weapons. But I still enjoyed it for Alicia's gameplay and especially her occasional diversions about the construction of violins, about music, and about Johann Sebastian Bach.
There are not any composers like Bach. There's just Bach. - Alicia Western in "Stella Maris"
Trivia and Links
In what seems like synchronicity, the teaser trailer for Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" (2023) was released on December 19, 2022 i.e. shortly after the release of both of Cormac McCarthy's Passenger novels. See it on YouTube here.
There is a combined article and review about Cormac McCarthy and the Passenger novels in The New Yorker magazine as Cormac McCarthy peers into the abyss by David Wood in the December 19, 2022 issue, which you can read for free if you have remaining free reads or are a subscriber. Thanks to Jessaka for the heads-up!
I was trying to save this one to read during the holidays, but I couldn't resist and it's short, and even though I read slowly and only about a chapter per day, I was through it quickly. I agree with some other reviewers that it's more about McCarthy himself, and his contemplation of The Kekulé Problem, a piece that I've revisited several times over the last few years, and will undoubtedly read again this week. There's a context and a connection to the Passenger, but if anything it just feels like I was given another reason to reconsider that book, and what he really wanted to talk about, under the cover of another fiction.
The lesson I will take from this is that when you (or Bobby) go to dark places looking for answers, you won’t find them. You may even end up with more questions.