Rating: 
Summary: A warmer winter
Review: The Stones of Summer is extraordinary-stories within stories, transitions, surprises. A book of remarkable range that we missed 30 years ago, but we have now been given a second chance. In these difficult times, we have been given an unexpected gift and in turn I thank Mr. Mossmann for his brilliant work and all those who have made this reissue a reality.
Rating:
Summary: What an interesting piece of literature
Review: Anyone who offends this many self-important, self-indulgent, self-promoting, gyno-originated, misandrous, nihilistic, hysterical Chicken Little, brainlessly sloganeering, whining female whelps can't be all bad.Buy that man a beer! My goodness, if one honest, open, naked and unique male perspective, offered by one man is so offensive to this small-minded group, I think we should celebrate the fact that they have been so successful at casting themselves as insignificant. In following simple, natural logic, I guess this means that Erica Jong is, what?! Hey, what's good for the gander..., right? They bought their tickets, Jane, they took their chances, I say "Screw Them!" Let's remember, this man was born of a woman. You can't just explain that away! Clearly she is to blame. Oh, I know...had she had more control over her ovaries, none of this would have happened, right? "It's springtime for NOW and Misandry." Read the book. It is harmless and a lot of fun to read. You will enjoy it, in spite of the lame, contrived rants posted in this review section. And, remember: "Pay no attention to that pissy, whining canes behind the curtain of critique."
Rating: 
Summary: Into the Remainder Bin
Review: I couldn't finish this book. I could barely start it. I was not at all interested in the story (or lack of) and there was a lot of the stream of consciousness business that I just HATE. I was incredibly disappointed as I loved the movie "The Stone Reader" and was really really excited to read the book. I can't imagine what came over that film maker. (Maybe he read a different book?!) I'll be giving this one to Goodwill before I am overcome with some weird notion that I should make another attempt at reading this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Everybody must not get Stones
Review: With 'Stones of Summer' already consigned to the remaindered bins, I would like to agree with the previous reviewer. 'Stones' is not terrible, it is just not very good. What I find inexcusable though is the fact that most if not all the favorable reviews posted in this forum were planted by the publisher. Can't we readers be trusted to form our own opinions?
Rating: 
Summary: Would be a mixed bag
Review: I think this book has been adequately reviewed here. Most of the time I would say that any book that generates this kind of feedback is worth reading. I am unsure whether this book is worth reading. I must admit that I was disappointed. But I think I was disappointed because of the hype. It is rare in our culture that literature gets any recognition at all in our society. I saw the Stone Reader guy on the Today show of all places. He convinced me not only to read the book, but also to look forward to reading a lost American treasure. This book is no treasure - see above and below. The only thing I'll add to the the reviews is that I never seemed to care very much about the characters, no matter what happened to them. I never got to know them. And at time overwritten? Yes, I found myself occasionally skipping paragraphs, which I never, ever do. But I think the acerbic responses here are partly due to intelligent readers feeling duped by effective marketing and one guy's enthusiasm. If I had stumbled upon this book on my own, I wouldn't have loved it but I wouldn't have thought it was worthless either. Simply put, it has the faults of many first novels. Read this book if you want. You may like it. Some readers here definitely did. But I have to admit that I was glad to see some of these sanctimonius reviewers feeling duped - they make a lot of effort here to seem superior.
Rating:
Summary: LITERARY FAILURE IN EVERY SENSE
Review: LITERARY FAILURE IN EVERY SENSE? SO WHAT?
My opinion is the same for Melville, Hawthorne and James. Many share my opinion and express relief when they find a fellow unbeliever in these icons; they are happy to at last be allowed to say in public, and above a whisper, the "no no" that all of those writers are dull dull dull. Masterpeice Theatre rescued James, and could probably manage with those mentioned above, and may have for all I know, but I defy anyone to make something worthwhile of STONES OF SUMMER with unrealistic characters (kids of eight sounding twenty eight - c'mon - this is suspension of belief to the max. And when they get to be eighteen they sound eight.) There is simply no door in this thing to some worthwhile place. A total downer. One wonders why it ever found a publisher, but then one wonders why it takes so long for some stunning books to find one, and that some don't find one at all during the writers' lifetime and we may well conclude that some never do. Perhaps the most worthwhile book ever written has never seen print and never will. Publishing is a crap shoot at best. Save your money.
I am not happy with writers who would conduct a cavarly charge at a walk, send their attorneys down to the OK Corral to negotiate instead of going themselves, ride merrygorounds instead of real horses, and would have made Sherman's March to the Sea look like a retreat.
Rating:
Summary: Cynical, manipulative marketing of a dull book
Review: As a book critic for a metropolitan newspaper, I have been reading Amazon.Com reader reviews of Stones of Summer with great interest. My purpose in entering the fray is not to critique the novel (which I found pretentious, unfocused and quite deadly) but to express my outrage at its publisher for planting fake reviews in this section. By comparing many of the favorable reviews listed below to the promotional literature that accompanies the book galleys, I have determined that at least four of these "reviews" (specifically ones from Los Angeles, Columbus and Philadelphia) contained lines lifted directly from the publicity sheets. The most glaring example is a review from a "Bob Shanker" in New York. An entire paragraph of his review is taken word for word from press materials I received in the mail. From my years in the publishing industry I believe that an "interested party" was so distressed by this book's bad word of mouth that Amazon.Com was bombarded with phony rave reviews to offset the bad ones. Rarely have I seen anything so utterly cynical!
Rating: 
Summary: the real deal
Review: I think it's clear someone has an agenda against this book on this review site. I've loved Amazon's review structure and have used it to sort out some stuff--bought books from it, but I don't much trust it when I see this happen: the same negative review on this site keeps appearing, first 10/26, then 11/7 and all, as someone else pointed out earlier, plagiarized from a Cleveland Plain Dealer book reviewer who's most likely off admiring James Patterson and god knows what else. Or, bizarrely, is the very same person with nothing better to do but hoot and howl.
Ask yourself why would some small-minded reviewer spent time ripping this book so vehemently? Anyway, I guess if you can hammer it without even giving it a chance I can give it a 4 by just leafing through and seeing it is clearly a major, original piece of writing that probably deserves all the hoopla. Books like this don't come along too often--the racket these days is too overloaded with failed screenplay writers trying to make a living selling thrillers. But when John Nichols, Thomas Sanchez, and other MAJOR, well-read, gritty novelists respect a book enough to have written MAJOR things about it, I have to think it is the real deal. Certainly a book worth having in print, which seems the point of the whole endeavor.
Interesting to watch a few disgruntled webloggers spend so much time still slashing virtual tires and setting virtual fires. Now, maybe there's a book in that!
Rating:
Summary: A total ripoff
Review: I'm one of those readers who bought into all the hype about this book. I plodded through the first 70 pages reading and rereading the pretentious stonecold 60s prose until like it almost made sense to me daddyo. You need to take magic mushrooms to grasp the pseudo profundities of this novel. Unfortunately I don't have any handy. The book is really maddening. It has no structure and no point other than the writer eventually goes nuts, probably because he's tried to rereard the novel himself and realized the hopelessness of it all. Stones of Summer is a big mud wallow of words that you can easy suffocate in. I feel I have been totally suckered by the hooptedoo surrounding this so called great lost masterpiece. No wonder Entertainment Weekly gave it a D-
Rating:
Summary: Impenetrable, poorly written and an insult to women
Review: Like others who saw the film Stone Reader, I was dying to get my hands on this book. Before I was halfway through, I was dying for it to be over. The Stones of Summer is the ur-Great American Novel, a sprawling, woman hating 600 pages long. Like most Great American Novels, it's about a boy. Dawes Williams, 8 years old in 1949 as the novel begins, talks like no 8-year-old you'll ever meet. His language is foul and lyrical and polysyllabic. This is an early clue that author Dow Mossman does not particularly value realism. By the book's end, the narrative is broken up into incredibly tedious passages from Dawes' journals and long dialogues with doctors, girlfriends and alter egos. Stones tries very hard to be a literary book. Jonathan Swift, Hart Crane, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, William Shakespeare, Laurence Sterne, Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway and Walt Whitman are all influences, and our hero Dawes is often reading one or another of these writers. Note the absence of any women from the list. At one point, Dawes samples Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" but throws it into the sea in disgust. Mossman's female characters - all peripheral - are either Beautiful Morons or Beautiful Ladies of the Night. Older women are boringly conventional, except for Dawes' wise, mystical neighbor Abigail. Who needs more dated misogyny?
|
