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25 Jul 24 (audiobook)
Companion book to The Passenger, this is narrower in scope and thus easier to understand. It consists of a series of interviews between Alice/Alicia Western and her treating psychiatrist at Stella Maris, the institute she voluntarily enters whilst Bobby is in a coma following a car crash in Europe. Did The Passenger mention the coma? I really don‘t know. Not a lot of answers here but interesting. And perfectly narrated.

“Music is made out of nothing but some fairly simple rules. The notes themselves amount to almost nothing. But why some particular arrangement of these notes should have such a profound effect on our emotions is a mystery beyond even the hope of comprehension.” This book is the conversation between 21 yo paranoid schizophrenic and math genius Alicia and her psychiatrist at the mental hospital into which she‘s admitted herself. Cormac at his finest

Expecting to be lost in complex ideas, instead I found this thoroughly enjoyable. All a conversation between a genius who has entered herself into a psychiatric ward, and a doctor. I just found it fun to spend time here. The last 20 pages were a little tough, but otherwise it goes by at a quick dialogue pace the whole way. You can follow as well as her doctor can, who isn't a genius. So, it's very accessible.

Reading this next.

💛💛💛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.

I love these two narrators! And I would be more interested in reading about the interactions and reactions of Julia Whelan and Edoardo Ballerini to this project than ever attempting to understand the “story”. I probably heard/read too much about what (if any) explanations it might provide to The Passenger, and I am more annoyed than appreciative.

Happy Pi Day! Guess it can be cool that I am reviewing a maths book 🤣 #iLovePie

Saw a comment that this is narrated by Julia Whelan and Edoardo Bellerini

Added to current listen ✅ (yes, totally influenced by #TOB23 chatter on yesterday‘s results)

I love McCarthy‘s bleak narrative style and his brooding, wordless characters. It turns out that even without these prerequisites, his fiction works for me. It‘s easy to get lost in the protagonist‘s theories, but I understand this to be just the effect McCarthy is going for; it‘s a means of characterization. I was also absolutely fascinated by one of the final ideas of language as a parasite, introduced late in humans‘ evolution. Wild!

What a companion to The Passenger! I‘m just stunned I enjoyed them both so much. They brought up challenging topics to grapple with and fantastic characters.

SM is conversations between a young woman and her therapist. She‘s a math genius, almost done with her PhD at 21. She‘s schizophrenic and suicidal, so these are tough conversations to get through (at least for me). As @Hooked_on_books said, it‘s great to see a man write an insightful woman.

I like the philosophical parts but the math talk is too much for a non-mathematician.

Satan is only interested in your soul. He doesn‘t give a shit about your welfare otherwise.

Well…I thought maybe Stella Maris would aid in my understanding of The Passenger. I‘m not sure if it did that, or if it made the puzzle more…puzzling. With these two books, McCarthy has created something quite unique; it‘s a testament to his talent that he can write a novel told entirely in dialogue and still make it compelling. I think twenty+ years from now people will be placing The Passenger/Stella Maris alongside books like Joyce‘s Ulysses.

There is a lot to process in this short follow-up to The Passenger. It‘s dense yet it didn‘t feel altogether complete to me. Still, a pick.

The narration was so good and I think I enjoyed the book more because of it.

I got a little lost in The Passengers and I think it was because I was so intrigued with Western but faltered with Alicia.

The 2nd book tells Alicia‘s story and I hope it draws me in.

I have mixed feelings about both this book and The Passenger. McCarthy is a hell of a writer, there is no doubt about that. There were phrases in both books that made you stop an appreciate his skill. I appreciate McCarthy's curiosity, but I really related to the psychiatrist in Stella Maris. He frequently responded to Alicia's musings with "You lost me" or "I don't follow". Yeah dude, you and me both.

Although this is shorter than The Passenger, I found it more challenging. Passenger is loose, warm, & welcoming; Stella Maris is somewhat dense & impenetrable, but deeply rewarding in its own way. I feel like there's a lot of 89-year-old Cormac in young mathematics prodigy Alicia. It feels like a writer who's spent a lot of time contemplating the void & now knows that his time will soon be up. I had to stop & pause a lot while reading this.

#ToB23

I haven't read The Passenger yet but having finished this one now I'm not sure it's necessary to read them in order.

Stella Maris is set in a mental institution and told through conversations between a math prodigy, Alice, and her doctor. The book feels more like one long rambling discussion on grief, life, and philosophy. I found it interesting while reading it, but I'm not sure how much I'll remember in a few weeks.

#likenotlove

After Holiday Book Haul at Barnes and Noble. That 50% off hardback sale was irresistible!!

Alicia is a mathematical prodigy who also apparently has hallucinations (she‘s not so sure that‘s the case). Told as a series of conversations with her therapist, we get to know a little of her remarkable brain as she traverses math, physics, philosophy, family, and her own mental health. This book is far superior to The Passenger, and you don‘t have to read that one to enjoy this one. #toblonglist

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