The Gift of Stones

Last updated

First edition (publ. Secker & Warburg) The Gift of Stones.jpg
First edition (publ. Secker & Warburg)

The Gift of Stones is a 1988 novel by British author Jim Crace. The novel, written in poetic language, takes place at the end of the Neolithic period, as the introduction of bronze tools disrupt the established order. [1] It is narrated by the village storyteller and his "daughter".

Contents

Plot summary

As a boy, the storyteller lost an arm and became an outcast to the villagers who rely heavily on their stonemasonry skills. The boy leaves the confines of the village, in order to seek a role for himself, and discovers his adeptness at telling stories.

The storyteller returns to the village, but most of his time is spent acting as a protector for a widow and her child who had also been forced out of the village, and live two days' walk away. Periodically, he returns to the village charged with new stories to tell.

He based an amputation scene on his father's experience with osteomyelitis—"his left arm was withered between his elbow and his shoulder. It was pitted with holes, and weeping with pus for most of my childhood," Crace stated in an interview with The Paris Review . [2]

Themes

The novel deals with the nature of truth and fiction and storytelling. [3] The reader is often presented with variations of the narrative and invited to judge which, if any, to accept as reality. Like other novels by Crace, [3] it also deals with social change and the effects of revolutionary new technology and as such could be seen as sympathising with the victims of our modern post-industrial age.

Crace has said that the novel acts as a metaphor for "Thatcherite Britain". [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. M. Forster</span> English novelist and writer (1879–1970)

Edward Morgan Forster was an English author, best known for his novels, particularly A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ramsey Campbell</span> English author (born1946)

Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. He is the author of over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them winners of literary awards. Three of his novels have been adapted into films.

<i>Use of Weapons</i> 1990 novel by Iain M. Banks

Use of Weapons is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first published in 1990. It is the third novel in the Culture series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Novella</span> Fictional prose narrative form

A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most novelettes and short stories. The English word novella derives from the Italian novella meaning a short story related to true facts.

<i>Lost Boys</i> (novel) 1992 novel by Orson Scott Card

Lost Boys (1992) is a horror novel by American author Orson Scott Card. The premise of the novel revolves around the daily lives of a Mormon family, and the challenges they face after a move to North Carolina. The story primarily follows the family's troubles at work, church, and the oldest child Stevie's difficulty fitting in at school, which lead to him becoming increasingly withdrawn.

Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the audience, particularly about the plot: the series of events. Narration is a required element of all written stories, presenting the story in its entirety. It is optional in most other storytelling formats, such as films, plays, television shows and video games, in which the story can be conveyed through other means, like dialogue between characters or visual action.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barry Unsworth</span> English novelist (1930–2012)

Barry Unsworth FRSL was an English writer known for his historical fiction. He published 17 novels, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, winning once for the 1992 novel Sacred Hunger.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Konangi</span>

Konangi is the pen name of the Tamil writer Ilangovan. He is the maternal grandson of the Tamil playwright, lyricist, writer and Freedom fighter Madurakavi Baskaradoss. His father is the Tamil writer Shanmugam and his mother is Saraswathi. His elder brother is the Tamil short-story writer Tamilselvan and his younger brother is Murugaboopathy a contemporary Tamil playwright. He grew up in Naagalapuram, bodinayakanur and Nenmeni Mettupatti and he currently lives in Kovilpatti, Tamil Nadu.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex Miller (writer)</span> Australian novelist

Alexander McPhee Miller is an Australian novelist. Miller is twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award, in 1993 for The Ancestor Game and in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country. He won the overall award for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for The Ancestor Game in 1993. He is twice winner of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for Conditions of Faith in 2001 and for Lovesong in 2011. In recognition of his impressive body of work and in particular for his novel Autumn Laing he was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Literature in 2012.

A setting is the time and geographic location within a narrative, either non-fiction or fiction. It is a literary element. The setting initiates the main backdrop and mood for a story. The setting can be referred to as story world or milieu to include a context beyond the immediate surroundings of the story. Elements of setting may include culture, historical period, geography, and hour. Along with the plot, character, theme, and style, setting is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction.

<i>The Road</i> 2006 novel by Cormac McCarthy

The Road is a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. The book details the grueling journey of a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed industrial civilization and almost all life. The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006. The book was adapted into a film of the same name in 2009, directed by John Hillcoat.

<i>Merlins Wood</i> 1994 short novel by Robert Holdstock

Merlin's Wood; or, The Vision of Magic is a short novel by British writer Robert Holdstock, first published in the United Kingdom in 1994. The novel is considered part of the Mythago Wood cycle, but takes place in Brittany, France instead of Herefordshire, England. The work has all new characters and focuses on the mythical birthplace and burial site of Merlin, the magical wood Brocéliande. Brocéliande is a smaller version of Ryhope wood where British myth predominates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prehistoric fiction</span> Fiction set in prehistoric times

Prehistoric fiction is a literary genre in which the story is set in the period of time prior to the existence of written record, known as prehistory. As a fictional genre, the realistic description of the subject varies, without necessarily a commitment to develop an objective anthropological account. Because of this, it is possible that the author of prehistoric fiction deals with their subject with much more freedom than the author of a historical fiction, and the genre also has connections with speculative fiction. In many narratives, humans and dinosaurs live together, despite the extinction of the dinosaurs and the evolution of humans being separated by millions of years. The paleontologist Björn Kurtén coined the term "paleofiction" to define his works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Crace</span> English novelist, play, short story writer (born 1946)

James Crace is an English novelist, playwright and short story writer. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999, Crace was born in Hertfordshire and has lectured at the University of Texas at Austin. His novels have been translated into 28 languages—including Norwegian, Japanese, Portuguese and Hebrew.

<i>Storyteller</i> (Silko book)

Storyteller is a collection of works, including photographs, poetry, and short stories by Leslie Marmon Silko. It is her second published book, following Ceremony. The work is a combination of stories and poetry inspired by traditional Laguna Pueblo storytelling. Silko's writings in Storyteller are influenced by her upbringing in Laguna, New Mexico, where she was surrounded by traditional Laguna Pueblo values but was also educated in a Euro-American system. Her education began with kindergarten at a Bureau of Indian Affairs school called the Laguna Day School "where the speaking of the Laguna language was punished."

<i>The Storyteller</i> (Vargas Llosa novel) 1987 novel by Mario Vargas Llosa

The Storyteller is a novel by Peruvian author and Literature Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa. The story tells of Saúl Zuratas, a university student who leaves civilization and becomes a "storyteller" for the Machiguenga Native Americans. The novel thematizes the Westernization of indigenous peoples through missions and through anthropological studies, and questions the perceived notion that indigenous cultures are set in stone.

John A. Glusman is vice president and executive editor at W. W. Norton and Company, the largest independent, employee-owned publisher in the United States, and the author of Conduct Under Fire: Four American Doctors and Their Fight for Life as Prisoners of the Japanese, 1941-1945.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nautical fiction</span> Literary genre

Nautical fiction, frequently also naval fiction, sea fiction, naval adventure fiction or maritime fiction, is a genre of literature with a setting on or near the sea, that focuses on the human relationship to the sea and sea voyages and highlights nautical culture in these environments. The settings of nautical fiction vary greatly, including merchant ships, liners, naval ships, fishing vessels, life boats, etc., along with sea ports and fishing villages. When describing nautical fiction, scholars most frequently refer to novels, novellas, and short stories, sometimes under the name of sea novels or sea stories. These works are sometimes adapted for the theatre, film and television.

<i>The Light People</i> Novel by Gordon Henry

The Light People is a 1994 novel written by Gordon Henry. The book won the American Book Award in 1995. The Light People is a work of Native American fiction, composed of many distinct but ultimately interconnected stories happening in and around an Ojibwe village in northern Minnesota, and the Twin Cities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Continent (novel)</span> Jim Craces first novel, published in 1986

Continent, Jim Crace's first novel, was published in 1986 by Heinemann in the UK and Harper & Row in the US. It won the Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award, the David Higham Prize for Fiction, and the Guardian Fiction Prize. The book consists of seven stories descriptive of life in an imaginary seventh continent. Translations have subsequently divided between providing a title incorporating that gloss, as in the Dutch and Italian, and keeping to the original, as in the Portuguese, Spanish, Czech and Serbian.

References

  1. Nixon, Rob (8 February 2013). "The Crucible". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  2. Begley, Adam (Fall 2003). "Jim Crace, The Art of Fiction No. 179". The Paris Review. No. 167.
  3. 1 2 Chalupsky, Petr (December 2019). "The Gift of Stories – Imagination and Landscape in Jim Crace's The Gift of Stones". American and British Studies Annual: 63–79. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
  4. Wroe, Nicholas (16 August 2013). "Jim Crace: 'At the Watford Gap it hit me that the English landscape was absolutely drenched in narrative'". The Guardian . London. Retrieved 3 May 2020.