Stella Maris

Cormac McCarthy

28 September 2023
9780330457453
208 pages

Synopsis

'A drought-busting, brain-vexing double act’ – Guardian

Alicia Western is the following: Twenty years old. A brilliant mathematician at the University of Chicago. And a paranoid schizophrenic who does not want to talk about her brother, Bobby.

Told entirely through the transcripts of Alicia’s psychiatric sessions, Cormac McCarthy's Stella Maris is a profoundly moving companion to The Passenger. It is a powerful enquiry that questions our notions of God, truth, and life itself by one of America’s finest writers.

‘Cormac McCarthy was such a virtuoso, his language was so rich and new . . . McCarthy worked close to some religious impulse, his books were terrifying and absolute. His sentences were astonishing.’ - Anne Enright

Remarkable… a staggering achievement
His sentences have the solidity of stones and the clarity of diamonds
A true work of literature… If McCarthy’s goal was for these books to haunt readers long after they are set aside, then he has succeeded.