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dinsdale 's review for:
Stella Maris
by Cormac McCarthy
Wow. I thought Stella Maris was excellent and it retroactively deepened my understanding and enjoyment of its companion novel, The Passenger. I'm going to go back and bump up my rating of The Passenger one star. I now want to go back and listen to it again.
Stella Maris conists entirely of dialogue between Alicia Western from The Passenger and her psychiatrist ,Dr. Cohen, at the Stella Maris mental hospital in Black River Falls WI. There is a very short preamble (one minute in the Audible book) read by the doctor describing the circumstances of her arrival at Stella Maris, and the rest is just the uncut conversations from seven counseling sessions between of Alicia and the doctor. I read bits of the book on Kindle as well, and McCarthy wrote it with no punctuation or quotations marks, just purely the words of the two charachters. The audiobook was narrated by Julia Whelan, also Alicia in The Passenger, and Edoardo Ballerini as Dr. Cohen. It was a fantastic narration, with Whelan perfectly capturing the many (mostly sad) moods of Alicia.
The novel really fleshed out Alicia's side of the story. I have a much better understanding of her life, struggles, and motivations now. Bobby Western got most of the attention in The Passenger and this novel is 100% about Alicia's perspective. There are deep dives in to her parents' history, math, physics, her struggles growing up a genius, and her complicated relationship with Bobby. It's a very sad novel. Alicia's story in The Passenger was complicated and gloomy, but hearing her describe her life experiences in her own words and knowing her ultimate fate from the prior novel was somewhat distressing.
I believe this is an important companion to The Passenger and would 100% recommend reading both together, they really compliment each other. This is a much shorter book, only five hours in audio. After finishing I wondered if McCarthy could've somehow incorporated this look in to Alicia's mind and life in to The Passenger to have it make more sense, but they really work so well as companion works that I guess he knew what he was doing. But I'm guessing a lot of people may not move on to Stella Maris if they were left a bit confused or unsatisfied with The Passenger.
Stella Maris conists entirely of dialogue between Alicia Western from The Passenger and her psychiatrist ,Dr. Cohen, at the Stella Maris mental hospital in Black River Falls WI. There is a very short preamble (one minute in the Audible book) read by the doctor describing the circumstances of her arrival at Stella Maris, and the rest is just the uncut conversations from seven counseling sessions between of Alicia and the doctor. I read bits of the book on Kindle as well, and McCarthy wrote it with no punctuation or quotations marks, just purely the words of the two charachters. The audiobook was narrated by Julia Whelan, also Alicia in The Passenger, and Edoardo Ballerini as Dr. Cohen. It was a fantastic narration, with Whelan perfectly capturing the many (mostly sad) moods of Alicia.
The novel really fleshed out Alicia's side of the story. I have a much better understanding of her life, struggles, and motivations now. Bobby Western got most of the attention in The Passenger and this novel is 100% about Alicia's perspective. There are deep dives in to her parents' history, math, physics, her struggles growing up a genius, and her complicated relationship with Bobby. It's a very sad novel. Alicia's story in The Passenger was complicated and gloomy, but hearing her describe her life experiences in her own words and knowing her ultimate fate from the prior novel was somewhat distressing.
I believe this is an important companion to The Passenger and would 100% recommend reading both together, they really compliment each other. This is a much shorter book, only five hours in audio. After finishing I wondered if McCarthy could've somehow incorporated this look in to Alicia's mind and life in to The Passenger to have it make more sense, but they really work so well as companion works that I guess he knew what he was doing. But I'm guessing a lot of people may not move on to Stella Maris if they were left a bit confused or unsatisfied with The Passenger.