Stella Maris (novel)
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Edoardo Ballerini
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| Author | Cormac McCarthy |
|---|---|
| Audio read by | Julia Whelan Edoardo Ballerini |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
Publication date | December 6, 2022 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 208 |
| ISBN | 978-0-307-26900-3 |
| Preceded by | The Passenger |
Stella Maris is a 2022 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy that was published on December 6, 2022.[1] It is a companion novel to The Passenger.[2] It was the final novel published before his death on June 13, 2023.[3] It consists primarily of dialogue with little narration, exploring the nature of the protagonist's delusions and topics such as quantum mechanics and phenomenology.
The novel follows Alicia Western, a math prodigy conflicted by her father's contributions to the American development of the atomic bomb.[2] The entire novel is set in 1972 in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, at the titular Stella Maris, "a non-denominational facility and hospice for the care of psychiatric medical patients," as stated on page 3 (the only page that is not written in dialogue). The novel consists of 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."[4]
Development
In a 2009 interview, McCarthy said that he had been "planning on writing about a woman for 50 years".[2]
