A review by jfjordan
Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy

1.0

This is absolutely the weirdest book I have ever read! It's hard to read because the author's style of writing is to not use quotation marks around dialogue, only minimum other punctuation, including apostrophes (with a few exceptions), and a running dialogue between just two characters, one supposedly insane, and the other a psychiatrist delving into the female protag's sometimes inane thoughts and her life. I continued to read this book until the end thinking that something would explain the reason for the book. But no! Because of the lack of standard English punctuation, the book was only 190 pages, thank goodness!

At least half of the book dwelled on obscure mathematics, which is way beyond almost any layman's understanding (including the psychiatrist in this book), and the author seems to love throwing in obscure words, perhaps to try and prove his intellect. It became annoying.

Cormac McCarthy receives stellar kudos and reviews from some big, important news media outlets, one proclaiming that McCarthy is "nothing less than our greatest living writer." (Give me a good ol' Nora Roberts' mainstream romance/fantasy novel any day!) Anyway, these overrated reviews lead me to believe that the writers of the reviews must've been high on some drug, and not actually high on McCarthy's "talent."