lliz4rd 's review for:

Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy

3.5

challenging emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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I’m guessing the inside of McCarthy’s head looks kind of like this book. I like the long ramblings, however some were too hard for me to understand, particularly the complex mathematics, the idea of that whole world was fascinating to me but I had to skip through a couple of lines of hard dialogue.

Speaking of dialogue, I love the format of the whole book being a conversation between the psych and the patient, Alicia Western (the sister of Bobby Western in The Passenger) The female character was actually written really well, in the sense she was written like all the male characters McCarthy had ever written, but with female pronouns. The doctor hitting on his patient and commenting on her body were a bit gross to me, but then it’s set in the 70s, you’d hope that would be left out of a modern setting.

All in all, it was more enjoyable to me than the Passenger, I loved knowing the other side of the story, while having some things left unsaid. But it’s a read requiring brain power, and possibly better after a second go around.