Stella Maris

English language

Published Nov. 7, 2022 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

ISBN:
978-0-307-26900-3
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4 stars (3 reviews)

4 editions

One of McCarthy's best

5 stars

This book reads differently from The Passenger, structurally, but is also in conversation with its sister (or should I say brother) novel. The interactions between the two novels is both illuminating on the meaning of both and adding new confusions that wouldn't exist if either novel were read on its own.

But Cormac McCarthy has always baked a certain vagueness into his work, so this should come as no surprise. After all, that's a feature of Cormac McCarthy...particularly with a couple of novels that has the unreality and unknowable nature of reality as one of their themes.

Stella Maris is written as a conversation between Alicia Western and her therapist that is recorded over a series of sessions. To some, this will be similar to the Sunset Limited and for good reason, as one of the central conflicts is very similar. And just as doomed. Where it differs is in …