Review: Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Passenger’ and ‘Stella Maris’

The publication of “Stella Maris” only a month after “The Passenger,” Cormac McCarthy’s first novel since “The Road” in 2006, is just one of the odd things about this literary double album. In “The Passenger” we’re introduced to Bobby Western, a salvage diver operating out of New Orleans. It’s 1980 and things kick off with Bobby investigating the mysterious wreck of a plane submerged in the Gulf of Mexico. Mysterious because there seems to be a passenger missing from the sealed fuselage. Or, as “Stella Maris” sells it, God and truth and existence.