Stone's Fall
The Age
Saturday June 27, 2009
Stone's Fall Iain Pears Jonathan Cape, $34.95STONE'S Fall is an epic historical mystery that spans the best part of a century. The framing intrigue is the death of John Stone, Lord Ravenscliff, an obscenely wealthy financier and arms dealer who dies falling out a window in the 1950s. The novel's reverse chronology takes us to London and Paris during the belle epoque, when Stone had enough money to manipulate stock markets and influence grand diplomacy, and further still to 1860s Venice, where we discover the key to his character. Stone himself didn't really interest me, but his wife Elizabeth makes the novel. A richly drawn Balzacian heroine, her career holds the secret to his, and each temporal switchback adds another incarnation - philanthropist, protean manipulator, courtesan and spy - until finally her desolating origins are revealed. This huge and ambitious novel does reach for some desperate implausibilities in order to tie everything together, but at its best it's riveting, dramatic and effortlessly told.
© 2009 The Age
Share This