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Title: Bay of Souls : A Novel by Robert Stone ISBN: 0-395-96349-4 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 22 April, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.41 (17 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Strickland, where are you?
Comment: Stone's novels have always had holier-than-thou,pondrous protagnoists. But, they've always been brilliantly balanced by intense yet hilarious, real characters. Pablo lets 'A Flag for Sunrise' work (see, i can't even recall the main character's name.) Walker and the hilarious directors allow the seriousness of LuAnne in 'Children of Light'. And of course, the great Strickland, one of the most enjoyable characters in modern fiction, gets us through the flat and humorless Brown in 'Outerbridge Reach.'
But in "damascus Gate' and now 'Bay of Souls', everyone is pondering their existence, no one is fun, let alone funny or light, nothing balances the Drama. And that's what these books are getting to be: paperback Dramas, not the multilayered, back and forth novels Bob has written with such perfection.
Rating: 3
Summary: Voodoo, intrigue and middle-aged angst
Comment: Bay of Souls is a relatively short novel that is interesting but at times convoluted. I have only read one other book by Robert Stone, Damascus Gate, which I thought was brilliant. This one, though not without merit, was a bit of a disappointment to me. Michael Ahearn is a professor at a small rural college. He is married and has a twelve-year old son. Michael's life is not unhappy, but it has a bleak quality to it, similar to the cold Northern landscape he inhabits. His marriage is basically good, but his wife Kristin is a formidable and somewhat aloof woman who seems to intimidate him a little. In short, like many men approaching middle age, Michael is doing all right, but feels confined and has the desire to experience something new. This something comes in the form of Lara Purcell, an exotically beautiful professor from a Caribbean island called St. Trinity. They impulsively start an affair and when Lara returns to her island home after her brother dies, Michael comes along. This, to me, is where the novel falters. While the contrast between the rural American heartland and the Third World tropics is obviously a deliberate part of the book, the transition is so abrupt that it seemed to me like a different book altogether. On St. Trinity, Stone throws in a host of confusing, though typical (though more for a spy or suspense type novel) elements --corrupt officials, Columbian drug dealers, an intrepid reporter, American troops who covertly support a dictator. This part of the novel is a little cliched, with Michael running into the same cast of cloak-and-dagger type characters wherever he goes. The spirit of Voodoo also pervades the island, and this is central to the story. Lara believes her dead brother took possession of her soul before he died. She is now committed to retrieving it, which means she has to take part in some elaborate rituals. Lara is also deeply involved in all the political intrigue, in a way that is not well explained. For example, it is briefly noted that she was once a socialist (who may have had an affair with Castro) but then suddenly "switched sides" to support right wing extremists...why? Lara also apparently had some covert reason for teaching at Michael's college; this too is never explained. I suppose these questions are not really the point of the novel, but for me they were holes that I can more easily tolerate in a suspense thriller than a literary novel like this one. Finally, the Voodoo aspect of the tale remains ambiguous --are the occult forces real or only in the minds of the participants? I suppose it isn't necessarily crucial to know this, but I simply found myself with too many unanswered questions by the end of the book. Robert Stone is an interesting and original writer. His use of language is always creative and there are many turns of phrase that I admired in this book, even while I was less than satisfied with their context.
Rating: 1
Summary: Let down
Comment: I've been a Robert Stone fan since way back, but I never finished Damascus Gate and Bay of Souls was a big let-down. It was a mish-mash of foriegn intrigue and existential angst and male sexual fantasy. What went wrong? This guy is one of our best. Hopefully, this is just a temporary diversion.
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Title: Cosmopolis: A Novel by Don DeLillo ISBN: 0743244249 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 14 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Bangkok 8 by John Burdett ISBN: 1400040442 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 03 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone ISBN: 0395860253 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 02 April, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal: A Novel by Zoe Heller ISBN: 0805073337 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Drop City by T. Coraghessan Boyle, Boyle T C. ISBN: 0670031720 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 24 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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