By the end of his 2022 novel The Passenger, Cormac McCarthy conjured quite a difficult problem for himself. If that book’s separately published coda, Stella Maris, is to be an extended study of the sister of Robert Western, protagonist of The Passenger, then it must offer a convincing portrait of a brilliant young mathematician who has an infallible memory, expertise in Cremonese violin construction, and a knack for the stirring performance of Greek tragedy.
