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leftistsquidward 's review for:
Stella Maris
by Cormac McCarthy
I may change my mind on this slightly lower-than-Passenger rating, but overall I really liked McCarthy’s duology. A classic hero of the West story (lol, like the names of the protags, get it?) completely undone by guilt, sadness, insecurities, a lack of a will to life, and a cynicism towards calls for action. Meanwhile there’s also an emotional depth there I didn’t really see with Blood Meridian or in the movies I know McCarthy was more involved in.
(Below I’m going to list out a general synopsis but given the one-track nature of this book ppl might see it as spoilers so be warned)
Stella Maris is less of a novel and more of a script lacking in stage descriptions or directions. We get an extended dialogue between Bobby’s sister and the man treating her at a facility named Stella Maris, in which more light is shed on the nature of Alicia’s hallucinations, her past with Bobby, her career in mathematics and general musings from her on life, death, love and maths.
I liked Stella Maris, it was interesting to get more Alicia (particularly as her presence is always overtaken by the Kid’s in Passenger) but I think there was some stuff here and there in this book I just didn’t care for. McCarthy *really* wants to sell how intelligent Alicia is and because of that there’s a lot of faff about maths and other STEM-y reflections that sometimes seemed brilliant and other times felt indulgent. I’m also not wild about the “I’m so smart I can’t *NOT* be depressed” passages, which were just a little lame and didn’t make sense coming from either Alicia or Dr Cohen. There’s 2 or 3 bits about the sexual tension between these two that I genuinely think could’ve just not existed, there’s one line in particular that’s so bad during these parts that for the first time in a McCarthy novel I thought wow: this reads very cheap.
I should stress tho, these are tiny moments in an overall interesting dialogue where it’s (interestingly) unclear what exactly Cohen is trying to get out of Alicia, and her perception of the world, as well as how this slowly uncovers more story, is fascinating.
The Passenger duology feels like McCarthy wondering what would happen if an All-American epic were to fuse with a Greek tragedy. It’s a really cool experiment and it is genuinely fantastic to see a writer still be this sharp at 89. I’ll definitely go back and read more McCarthy in good time, but until then, this was a neat little venture into his current literary aims.
(Below I’m going to list out a general synopsis but given the one-track nature of this book ppl might see it as spoilers so be warned)
Stella Maris is less of a novel and more of a script lacking in stage descriptions or directions. We get an extended dialogue between Bobby’s sister and the man treating her at a facility named Stella Maris, in which more light is shed on the nature of Alicia’s hallucinations, her past with Bobby, her career in mathematics and general musings from her on life, death, love and maths.
I liked Stella Maris, it was interesting to get more Alicia (particularly as her presence is always overtaken by the Kid’s in Passenger) but I think there was some stuff here and there in this book I just didn’t care for. McCarthy *really* wants to sell how intelligent Alicia is and because of that there’s a lot of faff about maths and other STEM-y reflections that sometimes seemed brilliant and other times felt indulgent. I’m also not wild about the “I’m so smart I can’t *NOT* be depressed” passages, which were just a little lame and didn’t make sense coming from either Alicia or Dr Cohen. There’s 2 or 3 bits about the sexual tension between these two that I genuinely think could’ve just not existed, there’s one line in particular that’s so bad during these parts that for the first time in a McCarthy novel I thought wow: this reads very cheap.
I should stress tho, these are tiny moments in an overall interesting dialogue where it’s (interestingly) unclear what exactly Cohen is trying to get out of Alicia, and her perception of the world, as well as how this slowly uncovers more story, is fascinating.
The Passenger duology feels like McCarthy wondering what would happen if an All-American epic were to fuse with a Greek tragedy. It’s a really cool experiment and it is genuinely fantastic to see a writer still be this sharp at 89. I’ll definitely go back and read more McCarthy in good time, but until then, this was a neat little venture into his current literary aims.