The NPR reviewer who critiqued Iain Pears’ Stone’s Fall last spring found it hard to put this nearly 600-pager down. And while I DID finally find it difficult to put down, it took a few days for the novel to work its magic. The historical novel is vast, starting in 1953 with the death of Madame Robillard (aka Lady Ravenscliff, Elizabeth, Virginie, and Countess Von Futak). The list of Lady Ravenscliff’s aliases alone should give warning to just how complex is the storyline.
Stone’s Fall is really three books–the same story is told by three different characters in three different time periods: London,1909; Paris, 1890; and Venice, 1867. All three stories revolved in some way around the death or life of John Stone, an English business magnate who controlled armament production for much of Europe. Part One, which took place immediately following Stone’s death, followed a young journalist as he tried to make sense of Stone’s business holdings and banking practices of the day. Admittedly, this bored me to death. Stock options, bank trusts, and Fleet Street machinations are not the stuff of fiction for me! By Part Two is was evident that, although the book’s title was Stone’s Fall, is was really the story of his wife, Elizabeth. As Countess Von Futak, she ruled the salon’s of Paris–and how she came to that position was revealed in Part Three. I often found myself paging back through the previous sections to determine whether or not I had “met” a character before, and under what circumstances. I also longed for a timeline to unravel the characters’ connections to each other.
Poverty, prostitution, espionage, suicide, and insanity reared their ugly heads in Stone’s Fall–all the dirty laundry that make up the best reads. But it was the unraveling of Stone’s death that satisfied the most.The novel’s ending was powerful, if not by the last ten pages, predictable. No need for a HUGE spoiler alert here–I won’t spill any details–but suffice it to say I’m curious about the number of novels that include incest as a plot device. I was also pleased as a reader that Elizabeth, the character whom I thought I had figured out, turned out to be more complex than I presumed–and, in fact, wasn’t the woman I thought I knew. And for me, that is a good ending!
This is my symphony 