Review of STELLA MARIS

He died. Did not get the Nobel. And finished with a cosmic bang ...

I will continue to beat the drum of Cormac McCarthy at each opportunity. With the extraordinary success of Oppenheimer and its likely and well-deserved Oscar crowning weeks away, this is the perfect time to pitch The Passenger and its simultaneously released “sister” novel, Stella Maris. They are companion pieces. The former a highly fictionalized imagining of the son of Oppenheimer and the latter a similar imaginative tour de force about the daughter. The dreams of Oppenheimer that Nolan used early in the film to capture the burden and force of seeing what nobody else does is expressed throughout these two novels: one through dialogues over drinks and the other through therapy. Madness, illumination, and the fierceness of living in a quantum state of awareness is experienced viscerally and intellectually in both. If Oppenheimer, with its 3 ½ hour length, dense plot lines and often relentless dialogue can draw in just under one billion dollars worldwide, I think a serious reader can read one or both of these unique novels. I apologize for the obnoxious dare. I am very likely projecting my frustrations with the Nobel nominating process and its indifference to McCarthy. Still … I dare you.

Stella Maris

By Cormac McCarthy

2022    208 page

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