“Stella Maris” will also arrive soon. Then I think we can talk more about the young woman. This is how I ended the review of Cormac McCarthy’s previous novel, “The Passenger”. It is not more than a month ago. Now “Stella Maris” is here. Full circle As I have read the last words, strangely sad, it is as if the reader in me is gasping for air. “Stella Maris” fulfilled everything I expected, while being something completely different. Really, something else. As I clap the book again, the timeline of the two novels together has made a complete circle. At the same time as they move freely in their own time: the 80s in the first, 1972 in “Stella Maris”. The young woman, that is. Her name is still Alicia Western. Still, she is the sister of Bobby, main character in “The Passenger”, the young woman who represents the sadness in Bobby’s life. The one that cannot be extinguished. Cormac McCarthy Photo: Scanpix/AP American author born in 1933. Gained a large audience with the novels “All the Pretty Horses” from 1992 and “The Crossing” from 1995. Several of McCarthy’s books have been made into films, e.g. “No Country for Old Men” (2005) and “The Road” (2006), for which he also won the Pulitzer Prize. According to the American literary critic Harold Bloom, McCarthy, together with Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, constitute the four greats in contemporary American prose. Young, gifted and troubled Veteran author McCarthy is 89 years old, and has now written a novel about Alicia, the remarkable young person. Alicia, with the enormous talent, most of all for mathematics, so great that it might not be able to be carried, that it had to be cut? The background taken into account. The book opens with a short admission report from Stella Maris, an “ecumenical nursing home and hospice for psychiatric patients”. The report is dated October 1972 and concerns a twenty-year-old Jewish/white woman who arrived at the institution by bus to be admitted. According to the report, she is a PhD student in mathematics, diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, and has a history of both visual and auditory hallucinations. Transcript as writing art This is the report and the first page of the novel. The rest, the remaining 217 pages, are made up entirely of conversations between the psychiatrist, Doctor Cohen, and Alicia. In order to emphasize the distinctive character, it is tempting to put it this way: If this text were not fiction, then it would have been a transcription – transcript from the psychiatrist’s audio tape. But here there are no markers: only new lines and indents tell the reader that the voices are changing. “Are you OK?” asks Cohen in the introduction to the first conversation. “I’m at the asylum,” Alicia replies. Asylum also means sanctuary – once used for psychiatric institutions. Stella Maris was often the seafaring people’s name for the Virgin Mary invoked as their protector. That is where Alicia Western applies. Inexorable guilt Her ballast is heavy; intelligence does not give her respite. There is the guilt associated with existing at all, and the father’s role as Oppenheimer’s partner in the development of the atomic bomb. She brings with her an abnormal ability to acquire knowledge and an accompanying, devastating life pessimism on our behalf and the world’s. Or is this where her illness lies, Dr. Cohen is not sure of any diagnosis. Not Alicia either. Because, is it really the case that there is one true perception of the world? ADDITIONAL: The two latest books by Cormac McCarthy belong together and can be read as one novel. Photo: Beowulf Sheehan A rewarding reading effort Yes, “Stella Maris” is a demanding novel. For someone who does not know mathematics and its history, understands little of that kind (such as me), Google remains a dear and diligently used friend throughout the book. The theories are many, old and new, their originators and a few women are even more numerous. But, and this is important: The reading job is worth the effort. Translator Knut Ofstad, who also brilliantly translated “The Passenger”, should take much of the credit for that. Sometimes even Dr. Cohen has to admit that he doesn’t quite understand what Alicia is saying. All while talking about God, philosophy from Plato onwards, maths and physics, cognition, truth and the nature of consciousness. Darkness in the world “Stella Maris” is probably the most downbeat and pessimistic book I have read in a long time: As with all considerations and statements in this book: The reader should keep in mind that the conversations take place in 1972. At the same time, it is difficult not to read the novel as a prelude, more or less, to the place we and the world are in now, Alicia’s Jewish identity included: A painful masterpiece So, perhaps it is in the deep pessimism that Alicia’s illness lies. Because, she’s not well. She has been hallucinating ever since she was a child and her mother died. We already met her companion Tassen in “The Passenger”. A nuisance, but also a friend. Alicia’s unbearable loneliness touches the reader deeply. Towards the end of the book, it grips extra strongly, in a detailed description of a planned suicide that she refrains from, almost on scientific grounds. And then, in the account of how she loves her brother, Bobby. There is none other than Him. Not for Alicia, she doesn’t know shame, but sorrow. One would probably ask whether “Stella Maris” can be read independently of “The Passenger”. The Norwegian publisher thinks yes, I prefer a doubtful no. I read the two books as one novel. Just like that, as one of Cormac McCarthy’s biggest and perhaps heaviest lifts, this duo is among the strongest reading experiences this year. news reviewer Photo: Gyldendal Title: “Stella Maris” Author: Cormac McCarthy Genre: Novel Publisher: Gyldendal Translator: Knut Ofstad Number of pages: 224 Date: Autumn 2022
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“Stella Maris” by Cormac McCarthy – Reviews and recommendations
