Stones Fall

by Iain Pears

1 of 5 stars 1 rating • 1 review • 4 shelved
Book cover for Stones Fall
Shelve It

Bookhype may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. Full disclosure.

In his most dazzling and brilliant novel since "An Instance of the Fingerpost", Iain Pears tells the story of John Stone, financier and armaments manufacturer, a man so wealthy that in the years before World War One he was able to manipulate markets, industries and indeed whole countries and continents. A panoramic novel with a riveting mystery at its heart, "Stone's Fall" is a quest to discover how and why John Stone dies, falling out of a window at his London home. Chronologically, it goes backwards - London in 1909, then Paris in 1890, and finally Venice in 1867 - and Stone's character and motivation deepen as the book progresses; in the first part he is almost an abstraction, existing only in the memory of those who knew him; in the second he is a character, but only a secondary one; in the third he is the narrator of the story. A quest, then, but also a love story and a murder mystery, set against the backdrop of the evolution of high-stakes international finance, Europe's first great age of espionage and the start of the twentieth century's arms race.
Like "Fingerpost", "Stone's Fall" is an intricate and richly satisfying puzzle, completely engaging on many levels, a triumphant return for one of the world's great storytellers.
  • ISBN10 0224081799
  • ISBN13 9780224081795
  • Publish Date 7 May 2009 (first published 1 January 2009)
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 30 October 2012
  • Publish Country GB
  • Publisher Vintage Publishing
  • Imprint Jonathan Cape Ltd
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 608
  • Language English