Skip to main content

Review: Stone's Fall, by Iain Pears


I finished Stone’s Fall a few weeks ago, but I held off on writing the review until now. Here’s the description from Amazon:

A return to the form that launched Iain Pears onto bestseller lists around the world: a vast historical mystery, marvelous in its ambition and ingenious in its complexity.

In his most dazzling novel since the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears tells the story of John Stone, financier and arms dealer, a man so wealthy that in the years before World War One he was able to manipulate markets, industries, and indeed entire countries and continents.

A panoramic novel with a riveting mystery at its heart, Stone’s Fall is a quest to discover how and why John Stone dies, falling out of a window at his London home.

Chronologically, it moves backwards–from London in 1909 to Paris in 1890, and finally to Venice in 1867– and in the process the quest to uncover the truth plays out against the backdrop of the evolution of high-stakes international finance, Europe’s first great age of espionage, and the start of the twentieth century’s arms race.

Like Fingerpost, Stone’s Fall is an intricately plotted and richly satisfying puzzle–an erudite work of history and fiction that feels utterly true and oddly timely–and marks the triumphant return of one of the world’s great storytellers.

I had mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, I enjoyed parts of the story and the historical setting is, or course, fantastic. But on the other, I though Stone’s Fall was a bit too slow-moving wordy—it’s a 500-page novel in the body of an 800-page one. The book’s three sections each reveal a different part of the mystery, but I felt as though each ended abruptly, with no true conclusion. As I read, I found my attention wandering many times, too. In addition, the financial parts of the novel were a bit above my head, and Pears is a little too fond of clichés (of the “she could see into my soul” variety). Still, as I said, other parts of the story were enjoyable.

Also reviewed by: Medieval Bookworm, Never Without a Book, A Reader's Journal

Comments

Alyce said…
I'm loving this book, but I still have to read the last section. I don't understand all of the financial stuff, but I like the mystery.
Kristen M. said…
I'm in the middle of this book (just started the second section) and am really enjoying it. I don't have any problems with the pacing or the finance.
The last Pears I read, I quit because I couldn't follow the story and I didn't care about any of the characters, so this is a refreshing change! I'll have a review up next week, I think ...
Anonymous said…
Iain Pears is a difficult author for me to read. I have a hard time following the story, even the premise of The Dream of Scipio and this current title are very intriguing, I cannot stick with them.
S. Krishna said…
Hmm...I have this one on my shelf but I might put it off a little longer. Thanks for this review.
Gaby317 said…
This sounds so fun! I love Iain Pears and can't wait to hunt this down!
Alyce said…
I finished the book, and I loved it. I liked all of the details and was surprised that the length of the book didn't bother me. I'll be posting my review tomorrow.
Sorry this one did not live up to your expectations :( I have it to review as well.

Popular posts from this blog

Another giveaway

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.

A giveaway winner, and another giveaway

The winner of the Girl in a Blue Dress contest is... Anna, of Diary of An Eccentric ! My new contest is for a copy of The Shape of Mercy , by Susan Meissner. According to Publisher's Weekly : Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren Lars Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars

Six Degrees of Barbara Pym's Novels

This year seems to be The Year of Barbara Pym; I know some of you out there are involved in some kind of a readalong in honor of the 100th year of her birth. I’ve read most of her canon, with only The Sweet Dove Died, Civil to Strangers, An Academic Question, and Crampton Hodnet left to go (sadly). Barbara Pym’s novels feature very similar casts of characters: spinsters, clergymen, retirees, clerks, and anthropologists, with which she had direct experience. So it stands to reason that there would be overlaps in characters between the novels. You can trace that though the publication history of her books and therefore see how Pym onionizes her stories and characters. She adds layers onto layers, adding more details as her books progress. Some Tame Gazelle (1950): Archdeacon Hoccleve makes his first appearance. Excellent Women (1952): Archdeacon Hoccleve gives a sermon that is almost incomprehensible to Mildred Lathbury; Everard Bone understands it, however, and laughs