A literary event. But is it actually a novel?

In Cormac McCarthy’s follow-up to ‘The Passenger’, a fragile girl sounds eerily like an old, male novelist

192pp, Picador, T £16.99 (0844 871 1514), RRP £20, ebook £9.99 ÌÌÌÌÌ

“Patient is a 20-year-old Jewish/Caucasian female. Attractive, possibly anorexic […] Patient is a doctoral candidate in mathematics at the University of Chicago and has been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic with a longstanding aetiology of visual and auditory hallucinations.”

These are the case notes usefully provided at the beginning of Stella

Maris – and they just about sum it up. The rest of the novel consists entirely of transcripts of the sessions between this young, attractive, brilliant patient – Alicia – and her psychiatrist, Dr Cohen. Basically, it’s a book about a foxy crazy lady talking to her therapist.

This might be enough to deter some readers. But Stella Maris is a novel by Cormac McCarthy, the American high priest of high style doom and gloom, author of Blood Meridian (1985), No Country for Old Men (2005) and The Road (2006). So, don’t come looking for uplift. Also, Stella Maris is intended as a companion piece, the sister book, to another new novel by McCarthy, The Passenger, which was published

just a few weeks ago and concerns mostly the life of Alicia’s brother – you really have to read both books to make sense of either. McCarthy, also note, is about to turn 90, and these are his first books published in more than a decade.

So, Stella Maris is clearly an event. It’s a thing. But is it a novel? Well, “novel” is a big word. Sometimes a novel is just a convenient container, like that shopping bag on the back of your kitchen door, which contains only other shopping bags and old receipts. Or like an old stained marquetry box full of fading billets-doux. A suitcase full of keepsakes. A compendium of final thoughts. Remnants. Gestures. Closing remarks.