Rating: 
Summary: The perfect sequel
Review: "Stay" is an awesome book. It's the perfect sequel to "The Blue Place" which is , without a doubt one of my favorite books. Nicola Griffith is an amazing author and her characters are very real. I would highly recommend this book but make sure you read "The Blue Place" first. You won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: ...
Review: A detective story with a lead charcter who rocks! It's great to read a book about a strong, smart woman. A must for fans of Buffy, Dark Angel, or anyone looking for a well-written adventure story. Smart and sexy! I had never heard of Nicola Griffith but was looking for a good weekend read and stumbled upon Stay. Now I'm going to go back and read the first book from Griffith. And I can't wait to see what Aud gets up to next. I hope they cast Angelina Jolie as Aud when they film the movie!
Rating:
Summary: Vivid, dark, devastatingly brilliant
Review: An astoundingly strong, rich, thoughtful and cleverly written novel. I have long been searching for a novel that would have at least the same power to completely rivet my attention, teach me how to see things that have been worked to death in so many other novels in a new, intelligent light, and make me really think - as much as "The Blue Place" did way back in 1999 - and this novel certainly has done that. Aud (as in proud, avowed, loud, and only very, very rarely cowed), is a very strong, intelligent, determined and fiercely loyal character, who, on losing her soulmate, Julia in an incident for which she completely blames herself, is on the borderline between acute grief and psychosis. But, she has avowed to "Stay" in the world, no matter what, a promise she made Julia before her death, and a promise she struggles valiantly to keep throughout the novel, no matter how tough and seeminly unreal things get; how torn her loyalties are between helping a friend find a girlfriend in trouble, and a brave little girl also in potential trouble because of it; and how, in doing all of this, she pushes her body, mind and will to the extreme, in such a way that one wonders if she will ever survive it all. Heroic, bleak, clever, but at all times refreshingly true to itself and the stark unflinching reality of life, grief and survival - "Stay" is one novel I definitely recommend you do not miss. Unputdownable noir at its very best. - Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Exquisitely written and heartbreaking
Review: I can't improve on what the chap says below. I admired her first heartshattering, atmospheric, and highly resonant tragic novel, "The Blue Place," starring this same lead detective character. That novel has the palpable sense of impending doom and unavoidable, inevitable destiny from the very beginning and this wished-for follow-up of Aud's state of emotional and mental health is pure prose poetry of being in the state of grief. I could identify. The 'mystery' novel part of it is negligible, a McGuffin, it's not about that, just as the first novel really wasn't either. The dead lover is so present in her thoughts and heart that it almost reads like a ghost story at times. Aud is not a great detective by any means, but she is a woman of action.
Rating:
Summary: Vivid and compelling book
Review: I have followed Nicola Griffith since her earliest books (Ammonite and Slow River) and her short stories. I've always admired the beauty of her writing and the humanity of her characters, and Stay is a remarkable addition to her body of work. Stay continues the story of Aud Torvingen (the hero of The Blue Place) who has shut herself away in a cabin in the woods to mourn the death of her lover. Aud is grief-stricken and full of guilt because she believes she is responsible for Julia's death, and it seems she is determined to stay that way. Griffith has always made full use of environmental and physical details (Slow River has been noted for its use of water and light as metaphors, and in The Blue Place Aud is constantly aware of her own body moving in the world and the sensations and textures of the things around her). In Stay, the entire forest ecology becomes a metaphor for Aud's state of withdrawal and grief ("The birds were quiet, the sun streamed down, and for a moment the valley felt like a place out of time, secret and silent and still, where no one intruded and nothing ever happened. Then I saw that the gilding on the trees up the mountain wasn't just sun but the first tints of autumn which would seep downhill until all was copper and russet and gold and, not long after that, bare.") Change is coming to the land and to Aud. An old friend convinces her to leave her refuge and find his missing fiancée. Aud wants to stay in the woods, but her lover made her promise to stay in the world, to stay connected in spite of her rage and her pain. This is the metaphor that structures and enriches the book: Aud learning that to 'stay,' she must change and become something else. In order to keep her promise to Julia, she has to grow beyond the person that Julia knew and leave Julia behind. Griffith is wonderful at weaving many layers of image and meaning into a narrative that moves quickly but always keeps us in Aud's head and heart as she navigates her way to New York and back again. I was impressed by the small, precise touches that Griffith uses to show us that Aud is really on the edge, not tracking well, and vulnerable: as one example, she reaches the city and opens her suitcase to find she's packed "three pairs of socks, two books, my phone, and a can of half-frozen concentrated orange juice." I was also impressed by the development of Aud's relationship with Tammy, the missing fiancée. They start out disliking and distrusting each other, and then begin to understand each other better as they spend time together on the mountain, healing. Again, the layers of metaphor abound: "When dirt is disturbed, it becomes unpredictable: perhaps when turned and tilled it grows fertile and lush; perhaps erosion sets in and the whole turns to sand. Some soil is never meant to be turned; it's best left frozen and hard-packed. Sometimes it can be hard to tell until you try." Griffith has been widely praised for The Blue Place, and with Stay she makes Aud more complex, more compelling, and just as fascinating as ever. The writing is lush and lyrical whether Griffith is talking about violence or healing, and Aud's journey through grief is convincing. Stay took me through a spectrum of emotions on a journey that I won't soon forget. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of literary work that doesn't pull punches or simplify the human heart.
Rating:
Summary: A powerful and unforgettable book
Review: I have followed Nicola Griffith since her earliest books (Ammonite and Slow River) and her short stories. I've always admired the beauty of her writing and the humanity of her characters, and Stay is a remarkable addition to her body of work. Stay continues the story of Aud Torvingen (the hero of The Blue Place) who has shut herself away in a cabin in the woods to mourn the death of her lover. Aud is grief-stricken and full of guilt because she believes she is responsible for Julia's death, and it seems she is determined to stay that way. Griffith has always made full use of environmental and physical details (Slow River has been noted for its use of water and light as metaphors, and in The Blue Place Aud is constantly aware of her own body moving in the world and the sensations and textures of the things around her). In Stay, the entire forest ecology becomes a metaphor for Aud's state of withdrawal and grief ("The birds were quiet, the sun streamed down, and for a moment the valley felt like a place out of time, secret and silent and still, where no one intruded and nothing ever happened. Then I saw that the gilding on the trees up the mountain wasn't just sun but the first tints of autumn which would seep downhill until all was copper and russet and gold and, not long after that, bare.") Change is coming to the land and to Aud. An old friend convinces her to leave her refuge and find his missing fiancée. Aud wants to stay in the woods, but her lover made her promise to stay in the world, to stay connected in spite of her rage and her pain. This is the metaphor that structures and enriches the book: Aud learning that to 'stay,' she must change and become something else. In order to keep her promise to Julia, she has to grow beyond the person that Julia knew and leave Julia behind. Griffith is wonderful at weaving many layers of image and meaning into a narrative that moves quickly but always keeps us in Aud's head and heart as she navigates her way to New York and back again. I was impressed by the small, precise touches that Griffith uses to show us that Aud is really on the edge, not tracking well, and vulnerable: as one example, she reaches the city and opens her suitcase to find she's packed "three pairs of socks, two books, my phone, and a can of half-frozen concentrated orange juice." I was also impressed by the development of Aud's relationship with Tammy, the missing fiancée. They start out disliking and distrusting each other, and then begin to understand each other better as they spend time together on the mountain, healing. Again, the layers of metaphor abound: "When dirt is disturbed, it becomes unpredictable: perhaps when turned and tilled it grows fertile and lush; perhaps erosion sets in and the whole turns to sand. Some soil is never meant to be turned; it's best left frozen and hard-packed. Sometimes it can be hard to tell until you try." Griffith has been widely praised for The Blue Place, and with Stay she makes Aud more complex, more compelling, and just as fascinating as ever. The writing is lush and lyrical whether Griffith is talking about violence or healing, and Aud's journey through grief is convincing. Stay took me through a spectrum of emotions on a journey that I won't soon forget. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of literary work that doesn't pull punches or simplify the human heart.
Rating:
Summary: Vivid and compelling book
Review: I picked STAY up in a bookstore and couldn't put it down. I had to buy it and finish reading it that day. Very compelling reading. Aud is a fascinating, well-drawn character, struggling with herself and her situation. Great reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Aud rhymes with crowd - does Torvingen rhyme with doggerel?
Review: I started reading Stay after having read some of Ms Griffith's previous work, including the brilliantly described Slow River and some of her short fiction. Stay is a novel struggling within confines. Ms Griffith has obviously listened to the widespread criticism of The Blue Place and has attempted to modify the brutal excesses of her macho protagonist. The Blue Place was a book that sat more easily among Men's Adventure texts such as James Axler than the winner of literary awards. Aud Torvingen seemed incapable of taking in any common place scene without delighting in inflicting violence on it. Such as fantasising in the breaking of a sleeping man's neck for no reason at all. Aud Torvingen in Stay is rehabilitated by grief. Or by the past critical backlash. This makes for an awkward setup where the protagonist is both violent and static. But there are other, more sensitive confines pressing on Stay. Aud Torvingen likes to travel out of the South. She went back to Norway in The Blue Place. Now she's in New York, a town she hates. The book was written before Sept 11th, but appears afterwards. So lines that depict New York and New Yorkers as "concrete and braying voices" resonate with a new tenor. Following the terrorist attack they have become, basically, rude. Yet there is only one concession to the changed world of today, a weak line that refers to the Twin Towers absence. I suspect that the author has not been to New York since Sept 11. On a recent visit I found continual references to the vanished trade towers, to the Fire Department and NYPD and to the pride that New Yorkers are taking in stating their Americanness. None of these things feature in Stay. What do are derogatory remarks about the intellect of the NYPD and about the manners of New Yorkers. I believe that there are more fundamental problems with this novel. Basically it suffers from laziness. Stay's plot is cobbled together from lifts from the thriller genre. Such as the use of Aud's dead girlfriend as a reappearing character. Julia appears and talks to Aud in identical fashion to Dave Robicheaux's dead wife in James Lee Burke's Black Cherry Blues. (This was an old idea when Burke did it a decade ago). "Stay" also relies on endless convenient devices. Aud manages to siphon an entire gas tank in broad daylight and no one sees - because this is essential to the plot. She follows the driver home and, of course, is the only vehicle on the road when he stops and needs help. During a showdown, she takes her eye off the villainness long enough to allow her to draw her own weapon. The child she rescues from child abusers can't stay with Aud, so what does Ms Griffith do? She rehabilitates the couple who collaborated with the abusers and leaves the child where she is. If these signposted and contrived devices were not enough, the book unfortunately suffers from lazy prose. "I kept my expression vaguely concerned" and "Tammy remained in teenage mode." This is indifferent description and at the extreme end of telling rather than showing. Aud dresses in "boots, shorts and tank." Perhaps in Book 3 she'll be wearing "sneaks" with Tammy the Teenager. In this vein, Ms Griffith charts the rehabilitation of her character by the use of a ridiculous rhyme. If we can guess the rhyme for Aud we'll know where she is in her nine point character arc. It's proud to begin with, when she's wailing on someone it's allowed, when she's cowardly, it's cowed, and when she's wholly rehabilitated she's part of a...crowd. This would be a simplistic thematic structure if it had gone unstated, but to state it transcends the farcical. It is surprisingly amateurish. Where are the lines like "moonlight lying like pools of mercury on leaves the colour of graphite" or "the water looked mysterious, unknowable, like an ancient harbour lit by naphtha flaming in a great bronze bowl"? Lines which are from Ms Griffith's own "Song of bullfrogs, cry of geese". If people do want to read rewarding prose and believable characters in a thriller setting they could try Burke's "The Neon Rain" or Mitchell Smith's "Stone City." If they want hardened, ruthless characters embroiled in violence there is "Afterburn" by Colin Harrison. If they want vivid and wholly realised characters in a (mostly) effective narrative, they could try Griffith's own "Cold River." It is a shame that this book didn't measure up to her own standard. I am surprised that Ms Griffith was happy to put her own name to this novel (she is a multiple award winning author) and also very surprised (and depressed) to find that this is a worse novel than "The Blue Place." Ms Griffith has, I believe, defended the Blue Place by saying that some critics failed to understand that Aud Torvingen doesn't enjoy violence, she enjoys winning. Winning in combat is by definition about inflicting superior violence, a tautology that Ms Griffith avoids openly confronting. However, the toning down of violence in Stay, and the attempts to rehabilitate Aud as a less macho character indicate that she has tacitly accepted the comments of those critics she purports to dismiss. That's dishonest, isn't it?
Rating:
Summary: movement with purpose
Review: Many so-called "thrillers" achieve their effects by constant movement, often to no purpose other than causing a rise in adrenalin. If that's what you want, go rent a movie with a high body count. When you open "Stay" its achievement is that it drives the adrenalin by virtue of its examination of the limits of responsibility, the development and application of a moral consciousness, and the costs of engagement in life--and the costs of withdrawal. This is not to say that all the movement is internal. On the contrary, "Stay" is filled with compelling action. But action without purpose, heroism without conscience, intervention without cost is a waste of time and ultimately a lie to the soul, a trap too many books fall into because it's easy. Griffith avoids this trap by making every move, every action, every choice, decision, and judgement matter. Aud must decide and it hurts; Aud must act and it's impossible to be absolutely certain; Aud must choose and it's hard. But in the end she does what all of us must do if we're to live lives that matter, that count for something--she grows. "Stay" is superior on every level and lives up to its title--it stays with you, long after you finish reading.
Rating:
Summary: she does it again
Review: Niccola Griffith has written another wonderful novel. Perhaps her greatest strength as an author is her ability to delve so effectivly into the mind of her characters and make them fully developed without resorting to any cliche' or formula---and to do so in such different contexts. In this follow up to the Blue Place we get to see Aud's tranformation through grief and sadness--and it works. Keep it up Niccola!
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