Why Isn’t This Book Reviewed More Prominently?

Back in mid-June this year I read this new novel by Brian Hall, a writer who pretty much dazzled reviewers with his Fall of Frost (2008), a novel about poet Robert Frost. The research underlying that book is impressive, and I liked it so much that I decided to invite Hall to Western Reserve Academy, where I was teaching at the time, to spend a day with us. April 10, 2010.

He visited classes, gave a speech to the assembled student body, signed books later in the school library (see image at the bottom of this post).

He was great.

Let’s back up a little. Hall had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard (English) and then headed off to ride his bicycle around Eastern Europe. His first book, Stealing from a Deep Place, 1988, was about that trip—from England to Italy.

This was the first of his books (fiction and nonfiction), each as different from the other as dolphins from sharks: Each lives in the ocean, but that’s pretty much the principal similarity.

Following closely was The Dreamers, 1989, his first novel that takes place in Vienna and features an American grad student, doing some research there, who gets involved with a young woman and her son.

Then—The Impossible Country: A Journey Through the Last Days of Yugoslavia, a work of nonfiction whose title and subtitle pretty much tell all.

Next, The Saskiad, 1997, is about a young girl, Saskatoon, 12, who has adventures in her mind and imagines having them with other explorers, like Marco Polo.

Also 1997 (!) was more nonfiction: Madeleine’s World: The Biography of a Three-Year-Old (his own daughter).

In 2003 came the first novel that seemed to catch on with readers and critics, I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company, fiction about the Lewis & Clark Expedition, fiction that was based on extensive research and earned some prizes, including being selected as the best novel of the year by the Boston Globe and some other papers.

Some more years passed (2008) before Fall of Frost, which earned, as I said, many fine reviews in major newspapers.

And now The Stone Loves the World, 2021, which has not received, in my view, the attention he and it deserve. Not only has Hall shown himself to be a significant writer, but he has written yet another book that’s rich in research, skillfully and imaginatively conceived and written, and important in so many ways.

It’s about a young woman, Mette (a programmer) who disappears, and her mother (Saskia!) goes looking for her—all over the place. We travel through some generations, through states, countries. And we end up in some strange places.

“It reminded him of something he had read years ago, comparing long-married couples to plants with interpenetrating roots" (38).

"Schiller said it: Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain" (221).

"'Of course we humans have enormous brains. We are able to become aware of these genetic tendencies and can choose not to follow them. But most humans don’t seem to enjoy using their brains, or value its use in others’” (399).

A fairly cerebral novel—but SO much worth the effort of reading ...

... and reviewing.