- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Mar 25 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0395963494
- ISBN-13: 978-0395963494
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 15.1 x 2.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 440 g
- Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,888,334 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Stone's shortest novel, and his first in five years (after Damascus Gate, 1998), is a tight, brilliantly observed tale of one man's moral dissolution. Michael Ahearn is a respected professor of literature at a small college in the upper Midwest, with a lovely wife and 12-year-old son, but a vague dissatisfaction gnaws at him, exacerbated by a frightening incident while deer hunting and the near-death of his son from exposure. When Michael meets a new professor, the beautiful and electrifying Lara Purcell, he falls under her spell and launches an affair, endangering his marriage and his relationship with his son. At Lara's prompting, Michael travels with her to her Caribbean island home of St. Trinity, a nation rife with political violence, where Lara hopes to repossess the soul she believes has been captured by a voodoo goddess. The narrative undergoes a tonal shift on the troubled, threatening island, with events unfolding in a more intense, then nearly hallucinatory way, especially as Michael is himself possessed during a voodoo ceremony in which Lara hopes to reclaim her soul. A brief return to the U.S. mainland closes the novel on a somber note. All of Stone's characters here are etched in the acid of hard truth, with Stone probing deep-particularly into Michael, a sensitive, at times courageous man whose lust for the divine, for transcendence or salvation, is spoiled by a self-deception and self-indulgence that lead him astray and finally turn his life to ash. This is a novel of bold prose and subtle perceptions, a small, hard gem from a master writer.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Stone's seven novels seem very different on the surface, but they share a common theme: characters losing hold of their moorings. It may happen in Jerusalem (Damascus Gate ), or on the open sea (Outerbridge Reach ), or in Central America (A Flag for Sunrise )--all settings where it's easy enough to become unhinged--but the process by which Stone's people self-destruct is finally an internal one. The pattern holds in this agonizing account of how an egotistical English professor from the Midwest falls under the sway of a Caribbean femme fatale, who leads him into his own special heart of darkness. Michael Ahearn has a beautiful wife, charming young son, and comfy position at a small Minnesota college, but if you look closely, it's possible to detect some twitching just below the surface, signs that the professor is vulnerable to psychic turbulence. It comes in the form of Lara Purcell, a political science professor from the island of St. Trinity. Before you can say la belle dame sans merci, Stone is following Lara to the Caribbean, where he lands in the middle of a political insurrection, a smuggling enterprise, and a voudon-drenched struggle for Lara's soul. As always, Stone depicts the internal savaging of his hero's mind with chilling precision, and his evocation of Central America in turmoil deserves comparison with Graham Greene. This novel lacks the grand sweep of Damascus Gate, and Ahearn doesn't engender quite the empathy the story demands. Still, as a record of one man's failed attempt to confront the darkness of the universe, it is a kind of small gem: perfectly chiseled and revealing an icy clarity at its core that is as frightening as it is hypnotic. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Strickland, where are you?,
By A Customer
This review is from: Bay of Souls: A Novel (Hardcover)
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.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Voodoo, intrigue and middle-aged angst,
By Lleu Christopher (Hudson Valley, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Bay of Souls: A Novel (Hardcover)
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.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Let down,
By Mary A. Whipp (Clarkston, MI United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Bay of Souls: A Novel (Hardcover)
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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