Stella Maris is a 2022 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy that was published on December 6, 2022. It is a companion novel to The Passenger. It was the final novel published before his death on June 13, 2023. It consists primarily of dialogue with little narration, exploring the nature of the protagonist's delusions and topics such as quantum mechanics and phenomenology.
Plot
The novel follows Alicia Western, a math prodigy conflicted by her father's contributions to the American development of the atomic bomb. The entire novel is set in 1972 in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, at the titular Stella Maris, "a non-denominational facility and hospice for the care of psychiatric medical patients," as stated on page 3 (the only page that is not written in dialogue). The novel consists of a "series of conversations between Alicia and her psychiatrist, Dr. Cohen, written like a play but with no exposition, stage directions, or dialogue tags. The subjects include mathematics, quantum mechanics, music theory, and obscure philosophy."
Development
In a 2009 interview, McCarthy said that he had been "planning on writing about a woman for 50 years".
Publication
Announced in March 2022, Stella Maris was published by Knopf on December 6, 2022, one month after its companion novel The Passenger.
Reception
According to Book Marks, the book received a "positive" consensus, based on thirty-six critics: eight "rave", sixteen "positive", seven "mixed", and five "pan". In the March/April 2023 issue of Bookmarks, the book was rated 3.5 out of 5. The magazine's critical summary reads: "Together the books are a heady intellectual project, “a diptych of existential suffering” (USA Today). Whether readers will actually enjoy reading them is a different matter".
Translations
As of mid-2024, the book has been translated into:
- Czech
- Polish
- Japanese
- German
- Swedish
- Korean
- Spanish
- Norwegian
- Dutch
- Italian
- French
- Portuguese
- Greek,
- Romanian
References
