The Love of Stones: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Lots of fun for gemstone junkies.
Review: Filled with loads of fascinating facts about rubies, pearls, and diamonds, and bursting with historical information about Elizabethan and Victorian England, 19th century Baghdad, and the traders, dealers, and smugglers of the gemstone trade, this is a captivating novel of one woman's obsession with The Three Brethren. A "jewel" created for Queen Elizabeth and consisting of four pearls, three balas rubies, and a pyramid-shaped diamond, The Three Brethren mysteriously vanishes during her reign, and a very tough, modern woman, Katharine Sterne, is tracing and hoping to find it.

Author Hill keeps the reader's interest high by telling two intriguing, parallel stories--that of contemporary Katharine as she travels from London to Turkey and Japan in her search, and that of the two Levy brothers, Jews in 19th century "Mesopotamia," who find some jewels which they expect will allow them to begin a new life in Victorian England's jewel trade. Largely avoiding the excessive romanticism which this subject might have engendered, Hill matches his prose style to Katharine's obsessive, business-like approach to her jewel-hunt. Nothing else really matters to her, not even family, and Hill's prose echoes the urgency of her search, tending toward efficient, straightforward sentences of fact, with limited description and none of the lyrical flights so common to historical novels.

I found this to be both a virtue and a limitation. It does prevent this big novel from becoming soupy with sentiment. It also keeps the reader moving rapidly through several countries, time frames, and sometimes complex plot details. On the other hand, it is difficult to care much about Katharine's search when we cannot identify with her--we do not know, really, what she looks like or even how old she is. Perhaps this lack of an emotional hook is the reason that Hill, near the end of the book, inserts a number of melodramatic subplots, leading to an ending which is both sentimental and, I thought, unconvincing with its moralizing--too pat as it pertains to Katharine and her search. Still, this is loads of fun for lovers of jewels and history, terrific escape reading.

Rating:
Summary: Matching profound wrting skills with knowledge of stones
Review: Great language which balances out the rather technical features of the book. Interesting research and interpretation of this. Amazing climax in the end and it shows a great competency for timing and story telling.
Bravo

Rating:
Summary: In Defense of Katherine
Review: I bought this book with trepidation because a novel I have written is also about a woman's quest and at its very heart is a spinel, the balas ruby of The Love of Stones. As in Hill's novel there are also two historical threads interwoven with and paralleling a present day story. I came to the conclusion that this was synchronicity as we must all be tapping into the vast collective where ideas and images rising simultaneously from the unconscious overflow into the imaginations of writers and artists.
In reviews the only flaw in this gem of a novel seems to be the inclusion (to use gemological terminology) of its protagonist, Katherine Sterne. If Sterne is not a lovable character, at least she is an interesting one. As I turned the book's well-written pages I kept asking myself, "Since when must we like the protagonist?" At first I'd wanted to be cheering for Katherine, but before long I was following her quest in fascination. Kate Sterne is not as mad as the collector of John Fowles' eponymous novel, but total self absorption, toughness and sang-froid can be traits of a collector's obsessive personality gone awry. The author, in describing the diamond might very well be describing his Kate--obviously the cold, driven character he intended her to be. In this way Hill keeps Sterne's quest from becoming "a sentimental journey."

"On the Moh scale of hardness the diamond is ten...but this is deceptive. For one thing diamond is the only gem which will combust, burning with a clear, quick white flame. It is as if the crystal were somehow organic...like skin and bone. And diamond is brittle as bone. There is hardness but no flexibility, and brittleness is an unforgiving quality."

But Katherine is enthralled with rubies. Rubies are a warm stone, implying heart, feeling, passion, the rubedo of alchemy, the philosopher's stone. Unfortunately Katherine does not go through the step by step alchemical process to deservedly earn the rubedo. We see her transformation at book's end, when Katherine's character all too hurriedly, all too unconvincingly reaches a degree of wholeness. It is at this point in the narrative that I find a small inclusion, but not enough of one to warrant giving The Love of Stones fewer than the five stars it deserves.

For those lured to the lore and arcana of gemstones, this rich, evocative and literate novel can be read and re-read. Like her or not, Katherine Sterne has remained with me. She will be included in my roster of memorable, if not lovable women characters, along with Lawrence Durrell's Justine and Edith Wharton's Lily Bart.

Rating:
Summary: Hardly thrilling...
Review: I have to admit I did not finish this book. I slugged through the first three-quarters over about three weeks then skipped ahead to the last page, decided it wasn't worth the effort and put it away. I'm sorry, but I wouldn't call this book "riveting" or "thrilling" (maybe I just gave up too soon). Like other reviewers I didn't find Katharine particularly likeable though that didn't bother me much. She just wasn't all that interesting. The brothers, Daniel and Salman, were only a little more interesting. Actually the most interesting "characters" in the book were the stones themselves. Two stars for the stones.

Rating:
Summary: The writing is superb
Review: The other reviewers have talked about plot and character and I agree with the positive things they've said. But I want to talk about something else: the language. Tobias Hill is an extraordinarily talented writer. His economy of language, his inspired word choices, his awesome power of description, his ability to create living people in a few deft phrases are not only impressive, they are writing to savor.

Reading Hill's book is like eating truffles. You read slowly because you know there are only 396 pages and you don't want the book to end. I would offer sacrifices to the Gods of writing that Hill be prolific.

One more observation: every page on this book contains surprises--surprising dialog, suprising events, surprising characters...the kinds of surprises that real life presents you with, if you're lucky. I know this is fiction, but it has a quality of reality that is rarely found in fiction. If I could give it six stars, I would. I find myself buying copies and sending them to friends.

Rating:
Summary: Cool quest
Review: This intelligent novel succeeds on many levels--so many that I was thrown into a temporary panic when I thought I'd left it at a coffeeshop (it had slid under the seat of the car). It is a fine piece of historical novelization as well as a fascinating antiquarian thriller. But Tobias Hill has chosen a protagonist who distances readers from her part of the story, which is too bad because what she's up to is pretty compelling stuff.

Katharine Sterne is after The Three Brethren, a glorious brooch once worn by Queen Elizabeth I. The search takes her to Turkey and Japan--exciting locations, beautifully described--as well as to mysterious corners of London, where two hundred years before a pair of Iraqi Jews arrived with a fortune made by finding a clay pot of priceless jewels. Are they the same jewels? How did the Iraqi brothers find them? Will Katharine make the connection?

The reader will care a lot more about the jewels and the brothers than about Katharine, who is much like Peter Hoeg's Smilla without the chink in her armor. She is such a cold character that the romance Hill wrangles for her is not believable. Still there is much else to recommend "For Love of Stones" and Katharine actually takes up little emotional or physical space in the book. I wish that Hill had created a character as rich as that of his marvelous stones.

Rating:
Summary: A Gem of a book about Stones
Review: This is a very good book. An almost outstanding book really. WHile reaidng it, I was carried away - I wished I lived in a mansion in Turkey, I thought I could be a gem-smuggler, I was entranced by the Victorian history.

So why not five stars? Was it the protagonist, Katherine, who is someone that you just can't feel for? While I would admit that I really didn't care what happened to her, it did not get in the way of enjoying the story. Was it the fact that the real stars of the show were inanimate things - the stones in question? No, I found them fascinating. Was it the fact that the story slid between two periods of time? No, that was done seamlessly.

What did lose it a star was the overly contrived elements - the love story that Katherine becomes involved in at the end (no more details in case you haven't read it yet) and the story of the rag-and-bones girl who becomes involved with the protagonists in the Victorian era story. Which is such a shame, because everything else in this story rang true, and was particularly well written

Rating:
Summary: A gripping historical thriller about obsession with jewels
Review: Tobias Hill's "The Love of Stones" (TLOS) is a historical thriller tracing the movement over the ages of the much coveted "Three Brethren" jewels which have passed through many hands and traversed many continents. There are two parallel and seemingly independent stories running alongside each other, one set in modern times and the other straddling the 19th & 20th centuries. Like two rivers, they cut through different terrains and flow at different speeds but finally converge in a surprise ending that may seem a little contrived but takes the novel into a whole new direction. Katherine Sterne, the heroine of the modern story, has only one thing on her mind. In her singleminded pursuit of the Three Brethrens, she takes inordinate risks with her own personal safety. Her obsession with jewels is neverly properly explained, although her final meltdown suggests there's blood coursing through her veins after all. Until then, she's a blank, unknowable and unlikeable. She doesn't make conversation. Her utterances are typically monosyllabic and bad tempered. We follow her escapades half the world over as she picks up on clues left by her most recent informant and closes in on her prey. The other story set in the past about two Iraqi-Jew brothers, Daniel and Salman, is more poetic and emotional. Like ying and yang, the contrasting natures of the two brothers balance but do not cancel each other out. While it is Salman's drive and determination that gets them to London and become royal jewellers to Queen Victoria, it is the more sentimental and steadfast Daniel that lasts the course. TLOS is a racy thriller filled with unexpected twists and turns and lots of seedy characters that spring from nowhere and just as quickly disappear. Of the minor characters, Eva Glott is the most well developed. Her incident with Sterne is especially memorable. TLOS is a finely crafted novel that makes absolutely rivetting reading. Hill's plotting is superb throughout except for the ending which betrays a slightly unsteady hand. His prose, on the other hand, like the jewels he writes about, can be hard and awkward in places. It takes getting used to but it's no trouble once you get the hang of it. One of the best novels I've read this season. Highly recommended.