This book is sort of like a companion book for The Passenger, released at about the same time. While The Passenger was a full-blown novel, this is quite a bit shorter, and deals almost exclusively with one character from The Passenger.
The story takes place in the form of notes between an institutional psychologist and his patient. To me it felt like an excuse to peek into the author’s thoughts on mathematics, death and mental health. All of these were covered in the other book (some quite extensively) but apparently the author wanted to follow up with a bit more.
I enjoyed reading most of it, with the exception of a description of drowning that was quite disturbing. Having read the other book we are aware of some of the backstory, and in this knowledge we get the most out of Stella Maris.
As usual McCarthy’s books are pretty cerebral and mentally taxing (in a good way) and so the next few books will be a little lighter.
Now I’m reading Mosquito Supper Club by Melissa M. Martin.
