Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy is a fascinating depiction of twenty-year-old Alicia Western.
In 1972, in Black River Falls, Wisconsin this gifted mathematician admits herself to a hospital with forty
thousand dollars in a plastic bag. She also has one request! She does not want to talk about her brother,
Bobby.
Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, she considers the nature of her so-called madness, her
childhood and, by the age of seven, her Grandmother’s fear for her.
As she surveys the point at which physics and philosophy intersect, she acquaints the psychiatrist
assigned to her case with her cohorts and chimeras and the hallucinations that only she can see.
All the while she grieves for her brother, Bobby, who has not quite departed, and not quite hers!
Depending upon the way we experience an incident at the time and the circumstances that we find
ourselves in at that moment, does that indeed influence our memories in the future?
This intriguing novel is told entirely through the transcripts of Alicia’s psychiatric sessions. It encourages
the reader to contemplate their own take on the difference between sanity and insanity, and also their
own state of mind and that of others.
Can we each have our own take on life and the incidents that occur in it?
Does it affect the way we live our lives?
A wonderfully written and intriguing read that raises more questions than it answers!
ISBN: 9780330457446
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Stella Maris is available in hardback and e-book
About Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy is one of the most enigmatic and reclusive superstars of the modern literary world.
Living and writing from El Paso, Texas, he has shunned all requests for interviews and appearances at
bookshops or literary festivals.
Nonetheless, he remains one of the most admired writers of the last fifty years. His eight novels have
received extraordinary reviews, being hailed as masterpieces of American literature. He has won the
American National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for All the Pretty Horses, the
first book of The Border Trilogy.
Cormac McCarthy is the author of twelve novels and a play. All his novels are available in Picador
editions. He lives in El Paso, Texas.
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