I love Cormac McCarthy. And, I enjoyed much of this book but it is dense and difficult. So, readers should be aware that getting through it might be a challenge.

I selected The Passenger and Stella Maris as the June and July book club titles for my library's adult fiction book club. Stella Maris is a conversation between Alicia and her psychiatrist in an institution. The book doesn't stray from that or cover any other point of view (like her brother's). If you were hoping to find out what was up with the plane crash or the people following Bobby in The Passenger, you will be disappointed (like my book club members were). In some ways, I thought this book was better than the first one. I wouldn't recommend either though considering The Road and Blood Meridian exist. RIP Mr. McCarthy and thank you for two masterpieces (The Road and Blood Meridian).

In 2005 James Wood in The New Yorker wrote, “To read Cormac McCarthy is to enter a climate of frustration: a good day is so mysteriously followed by a bad one. McCarthy is a colossally gifted writer, certainly one of the greatest observers of landscape. He is also one of the great hams of American prose.” Now eighty-nine, McCarthy’s two new novels—at least on the surface—focus on the tragic relationship between a brother and sister, Bobby and Alicia (Alice) Western. The first, The Passenger, is novel-length and the second (much shorter text), Stella Maris, is structured as a series of therapy sessions between Alicia and her psychiatrist at the psychiatric facility where she has committed herself for the third and tragically final time.

You can read my full review in the Dec/Jan 2023 issue of The Brooklyn Rail.

Cormac is a genius but this was a bit too dense for me to get through at this time in my reading journey... I hope to come back to it at some point, however, because I think it has a lot of potential.

I am a Cormac McCarthy fan and so would have a hard time criticizing any of his work (even if it wasn't my personal favorite), but luckily this newest novel did not disappoint. Strange, heartbreakingly sad, sharp, and at times viciously funny, the story of Alice/Alicia is one that will stick with me for a long time.

I bailed on The Passenger without finishing it. But it was a necessary preparation for reading this novel, which I ironically found more interesting (although I will confess to skimming a bit here and there). Bobby was the main protagonist in the first novel; this one is made up entirely of transcripts of his sister Alicia's psychiatric sessions at the Stella Maris mental health facility. Alicia's hallucinations formed a subplot of the first novel. She claims to have moved past them in these sessions, although she discusses them with her psychiatrist (which would not make much sense if the reader had not read the first book). The discussions are a heady mix of philosophy, mathematics, grief, and longing.

Alicia confesses her romantic love for her brother, who is currently in a coma after a car crash. This makes for a confusing timeline between the two books. In the first book, Bobby is not in a coma, but he says his sister is dead. Unless I am missing something, and some mix of memory and fantasy is involved? The sessions are sufficiently interesting that these considerations did not occur to me until I had finished the book. The final session tails off without much conclusion, although Alicia asks her therapist to hold her hand, "because that's what people do when they're waiting for the end of something." So maybe she is again contemplating suicide, as she had just been discussing.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC

What an excursion into the big questions of life: What is reality? Why do we exist? What comes next? Even though I don’t completely understand all of the mathematical information, I am in awe of the author’s depth and breadth of curiosity and knowledge. His exploration of mental illness and of a suicidal wish seem eerily accurate. This book, together with its first companion novel “The Passenger”, are an amazing musing on the nature of humanity today.

Thanks to NetGalley and Alfred A Knopf Publishing for the ARC to read and review.

STELLA MARIS
Cormac McCarthy
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
ISBN-13: 978-0307269003
Hardcover
Fiction

The publication of STELLA MARIS by Cormac McCarthy completes the venerated author’s long-anticipated literary work that has been neatly divided between this volume and THE PASSENGER, which appeared just weeks ago. STELLA MARIS is about half the length of THE PASSENGER and while somewhat different from its predecessor in its telling but is no less compelling.

While THE PASSENGER was primarily but not entirely given over to the troubled point of view of Bobby Western, STELLA MARIS presents the viewpoint of Alicia Western, Bobby’s brilliant and even more disturbed younger sister. The story begins with Alicia, a mathematical prodigy and doctoral candidate in mathematics, having been admitted on a voluntary basis in October 1972 to Stella Maris, a Wisconsin facility for the care of psychiatric medical patients where she has twice been admitted previously. The narrative is told entirely (except for a brief medical report found at the beginning of the book) in somewhat of a transcript form, documenting a series of what are intended to be therapy sessions between Alicia and Dr. Cohen, a staff psychiatrist who is also a professor at the University of Wisconsin. Given McCarthy’s wont to eschew quotation marks and attribution, the reader is left to their own devices to determine who is saying what to who. This is initially a bit daunting but is ultimately not as difficult as it might seem, for the reader can begin to discern the voice of each speaker after a few pages, as the question-and-answer and give-and-take of the sessions gradually reveal and distinguish the personalities involved. What is almost immediately clear is that Cohen, the trained and experienced professional, almost immediately loses control of the sessions, even as he appears to be unaware that he has done so. That situation sets the tone for what follows. The ultimate problem, wonderfully and skillfully set up by McCarthy, is that it is difficult for Cohen as well as the reader to fully credit the truth of Alicia’s statements.

Therein lies the brilliance of STELLA MARIS. Alicia is so beyond Dr. Cohen in every way that he can barely keep from drowning in her wake. When Dr. Cohen begins to approach the threshold of the truth, at least as Alicia sees it, she goes spinning away into a discussion of the practical application of mathematics and philosophy as a means of defining reality, to the extent that such can be defined. This in turn raises some --- actually many --- interesting questions regarding the accuracy of Alicia’s observations and beliefs. It is also not always obvious when Dr. Cohen is being put on, without even so much as a wink to the reader. In Alicia’s world of mathematics informed by philosophy with a nod to physics the possibilities and the realities might even co-exist in equal parts.

As might be expected, the descriptions of certain events occasionally vary in degrees between one book and viewpoint and the other. These might initially be considered to be he said/she said differences. An offhand revelation then turns everything that has gone before in both volumes inside out and upside down. It is presented so quietly that a less-than-attentive reader might miss it entirely. That would be unfortunate, given that Alicia’s account at that point explains almost all of the unanswered questions and unsolved mysteries left at the conclusion of THE PASSENGER without specifically referencing them before she knocks the whole carefully constructed chessboard over.

It is for that, and other reasons, that you may feel as if your head might explode while or after reading STELLA MARIS. Serve that feeling up with some self-congratulations. It means that you were paying attention. I certainly don’t recall ever encountering anything quite as deep, dark, and complex as this book and its companion volume. You may need to give up your favorite author for a while simply to avoid comparing your next reading experience too harshly against this sprawling and disturbing work, which at the end of the day is nothing short of incomparable and not to be missed.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
© Copyright 2022, The Book Report, Inc. All rights reserved.

Really tried to get into this book and I went a long way with it also. I would lie if I said I enjoyed it even some. What in the world? Does this style attract people to want to get into people's minds. Sure if you're a head doctor, but I totally couldn't give it a good rating. I appreciate that I received permission and I do like the author's other books especially The Road. I guess everyone gets out of the box sometimes and it's what makes the world go around.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. If you have not read The Passenger, there are spoilers below.

I have just finished The Passenger so the story and the characters here are fresh in my mind. The Passenger left us hanging regarding both Bobby and Alicia even though we know from the beginning of that book that Alicia kills herself. We had no idea what happened to Bobby next, or what the relationship between the siblings entailed.

The entirety of Stella Maris is composed of a therapist's notes from his sessions with Alicia who has committed herself to the asylum Stella Maris. The conversations are mostly about mathematics, philosophy, and how Alicia views the world. Her thoughts and the way she sees herself and everyone around her are fascinating. She makes strong arguments for her vision as opposed to the way 'normal' people see the world. She is not the typical mentally ill person you see in literature.

However, unless you want a very deep dive into mathematics and philosophy, this book is going to be very tedious. Every once in a while we get a tidbit about Alicia's life; her struggles with being a prodigy, having both of her parents die when she is young, and her incestuous relationship with her brother. It should be noted that both characters lie to others about their relationship in the books; Bobby in Passenger and Alicia in this one. That leaves the reader not knowing what their relationship truly was as the accounts differ.

My take on this book and Passenger is that McCarthy wanted to be as mysterious and distant as possible. Stella Maris and The Passenger are both extremely frustrating books with the majority of both comprised of conversations that lead absolutely nowhere and lend little to the plot or the development of the characters. There does not seem to be a point to either book, especially this one as literally nothing happens, little is learned, and then it just stops.

I do not recommend this book to anyone, even diehard McCarthy fans. From what I read, the only reason this got published was because of his name.

While I thought the plot okayI wasn’t comfortable with and didn’t enjoy the style of writing of only using the dialog from sessions. As a huge fan of Cormac McCarthy’s other works this was a disappointment.