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Title details for Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy - Available

Stella Maris

#2 in series

by Cormac McCarthy
Julia Whelan
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The second volume of The Passenger series, from The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Road • An intimate portrait of grief and longing, as a young woman in a psychiatric facility seeks to understand her own existence.

"The richest and strongest work of McCarthy’s career…An achievement greater than Blood Meridian…or…The Road.” —The Atlantic
1972, BLACK RIVER FALLS, WISCONSIN: Alicia Western, twenty years old, with forty thousand dollars in a plastic bag, admits herself to the hospital. A doctoral candidate in mathematics at the University of Chicago, Alicia has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and she does not want to talk about her brother, Bobby. Instead, she contemplates the nature of madness, the human insistence on one common experience of the world; she recalls a childhood where, by the age of seven, her own grandmother feared for her; she surveys the intersection of physics and philosophy; and she introduces her cohorts, her chimeras, the hallucinations that only she can see. All the while, she grieves for Bobby, not quite dead, not quite hers. Told entirely through the transcripts of Alicia’s psychiatric sessions, Stella Maris is a searching, rigorous, intellectually challenging coda to The Passenger, a philosophical inquiry that questions our notions of God, truth, and existence.

  • Creators

  • Series

    The Passenger

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 6, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593633595
      • File size: 141168 KB
      • Duration: 04:54:05

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 11, 2022
      McCarthy’s underwhelming companion piece to The Passenger, set eight years earlier, in 1972, begins with a one-paragraph case file for 20-year-old PhD candidate Alicia Western. Alicia, who has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, has been dropped off at Stella Maris, a psychiatric hospital in rural Wisconsin, with over $40,000 in cash. What follows is 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. Before Alicia arrived at Stella Maris, her Formula 1 driver brother, Bobby Western, had a crash during a race that put him into a coma. She’s in love with Bobby, but refuses to talk about him with Cohen until the third act. There are scraps of humor (“Mathematics is ultimately a faith-based initiative. And faith is an uncertain business,” Alicia tells Cohen), though not much tension, as the reader already knows how things will end (Alicia’s body is discovered on the first page of The Passenger). McCarthy has swum in these waters before, and with more impressive strokes. Strangely, The Passenger offers a more successful ending to the story of Alicia and Bobby. Though this volume feels extraneous, McCarthy diehards will still flock to it.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      In this coda to McCarthy's bestselling novel THE PASSENGER, narrators Julia Whelan and Edoardo Ballerini play the parts of troubled mathematical genius Alicia Western and her therapist as she seeks treatment in a mental hospital named Stella Maris. As the story is told entirely through the transcripts of Alicia's treatment, Whelan brings an edge of madness and yearning to her performance of the paranoid schizophrenic. She expresses Alicia's philosophy and scientific theory in the shaky voice of a child in pain. Ballerini shines as her challenged therapist, using his soft but affecting voice to poke and prod until the truth is gently revealed. The story is told only in dialogue, words that challenge our perceptions of life and reality. R.O. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      March 1, 2023

      In 1972, Alicia Western, a PhD candidate in mathematics at the University of Chicago, checks herself into Stella Maris, a psychiatric hospital in rural Wisconsin, with over $40,000 in cash. She is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. The psychiatrist thinks she is there to talk about her decision to take her brother Bobby off life support. Instead, Alicia begins a meandering discussion about philosophy, mathematics, humanity, religion, ethics, and mental illness. McCarthy's companion novel to The Passenger is a gripping, thought-provoking look at what it means to be human. Narrators Julia Whelan and Edoardo Ballerini give stunning performances as Alicia and her psychiatrist. With a calm, measured tone, Ballerini provides stability, while Whelan embodies a troubled but brilliantly self-aware Alicia as she reveals shocking truths about her life. Listeners will be wholly drawn into Alicia's slippery story where the boundaries of truth and reality become blurred. The audio provides ambiance with well-placed sound effects, such as the clicking of the psychiatrist's tape recorder. VERDICT Libraries will want to purchase this piercing work, not only because of McCarthy's many fans, but also because the audiobook skillfully communicates the depth and beauty of his haunting story.--Elyssa Everling

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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