The Gift of Stones

A Storyteller Of The Stone Age

Set in the stone age among a village of stone workers ("stoneys") and stone traders ("mongers"), Jim Crace's short 1988 novel "The Gift of Stones" is a story of the power of imagination and of the forces of social change. Crace writes simply and well. Unfortunately, the stone age setting of the book is not developed; and, beyond the setting, the story is conventional and the characters unremarkable.

The book has three layers. The outermost layer, only briefly suggested, involves the work of an archeologist who, in 1927, discovered the skeleton of a boy of the stone age whose arm appeared to have been surgically amputated. Crace takes this slender historical find to construct his tale of a young stone age man who has suffered an amputation.

The remaining two layers are developed in the novel itself. The primary narrator is a nameless man that we know only as "father" whose arm has been amputated in his youth. He is an orphan who has been raised and exploited by his uncle to work in the stone pits. When the young man loses his arm, in an operation described in substantial, gory detail, he can no longer work in the quarry. He becomes a teller of tales - beginning with the circumstances that led to the amputation of his arm - and a dreamer of dreams who fascinates the villagers with his yarns and with the power of imagination.

There is a second narrator for a portion of the novel. It is the voice of a young woman who calls herself "daughter". Initially, she appears as the daughter of the storyteller, but as the novel progresses her relationship to the storyteller becomes clarified in an anticlimactic, unsurprising way. Daughter comments and expands upon her father's stories and his life and embroiders them with stories of her own. Thus she offers the third layer of the novel -- in terms of a voice that expands upon facts using the powers of imagination. (Crace's voice is the first and father's voice is the second.)

Another major character in the book does not speak in her own voice. She is a woman who becomes known as "Doe". Doe lives
on the beach, together with her baby daughter and a dog, isolated from the village of stone workers by a ridge. Her husband and two sons have disappeared and most likely have been killed. To survive in her remote hut, Doe barters herself to horsemen and other passers-by for food, pottery, bedding, and the like. Wandering over the ridge, the novel's protagonist meets Doe and her daughter and a relationship of sorts begins. When Doe's home is destroyed by marauders, the narrator brings Doe and the daughter to the village where they live unhappily. Doe resumes her former profession. The village is ultimately destroyed when its inhabitants fail to anticipate and adjust to the new "bronze age".

Doe's trade is called "the world's oldest profession" with reason. The book gives a good imaginative portrayal of how this business may have been conducted in stone age times and of the character of those engaging in it. The rest of the book is trite and commonplace. There is a lack of characterization making it difficult to become concerned with any of the persons in the story.

While an author has discretion regarding the setting of a book,setting this work in the stone age adds little of interest. It is vaguely done. The author appears to be writing a parable of the modern age using the stone age as a foil. Thus the book explores themes of the power and nature of imaginative literature, the need for cultures and individuals to recognize and adjust to forces of social and economic change, the relationship between workers (the "stoneys") and the managers (the "mongers") in terms of economic and social organization, and the relationship between men and women. The texture of the book and the characterization of ages, places and persons is too thin to support these issues. As a result they are treated in a bland, unconvincing manner. Plainly the author has more of an interest in contemporary issues than he does in his stone age setting. These two components (stone age and contemporary social commentary) are not interrelated well in the book. Thus, at best, the novel is tepid. It fails to work as a story of the stone age or as a parable. Its simple setting cannot support the broad nature of its themes. Therefore, I found the book disappointing.

Robin Friedman