Historical crime mystery set in BRISTOL and LONDON
Immersive novel set in the CEVENNES, France
9th October 2024
And the Stones Cry Out by Clara DuPont-Monod, an immersive novel set in the CEVENNES, France.
Translated by Ben Faccini
This novel is a deep and thought-provoking portrayal of the psychological impacts of growing up with a profoundly disabled sibling destined to live a very short life. The child is known by the stones narrating the tale simply as “the boy”. Most observant stones they are, too. Wise stones belonging to the mountain, timeless stones that do not judge.
The stones mostly ignore the rather helpless and despairing parents who exist in a state of perpetual anguish and do nothing much to assist the various responses each child makes to the situation they find themselves in. The stones are concerned with the siblings.
There’s the first born, a rather cocky boy who changes dramatically when he embraces a caring role for the boy, a role that eventually results in his own isolation from others and from his own feelings. Then there’s the second born, a girl who, after accidentally nearly snapping the neck of the boy, rages against the situation she finds herself in. She rebels, gets into trouble, and then suddenly becomes exacting and controlling. Both the first and the second born carry their somewhat broken psychology into adulthood. And then there’s the new born child who arrives long after the boy dies. The new born is special in his own way, he has the gift of empathy, and because of it he is tortured by the boy’s absence and his own incomprehension, as though he is living in a shadow cast by the boy, a shadow that results in him inventing an imaginary version that he can talk to. It is through the last born that the family is made whole.
Ultimately, And the Stones Cry Out is a story of trauma, healing and hope. It is an exploration of the many and varied kinds of emotional responses and thoughts a child would experience in the same situation. It is not a novel with a drama-filled plot that will keep a reader turning the pages. The story is an emotional one, and it is made compelling thanks to detachment provided by the narration.
Nature is ever present in this novel. The portrayal of the mountainous region of France is simply sublime and, in some ways also a little claustrophobic, as what is being narrated by the stones is somehow trapped by the mountains themselves, cut off from the rest of the world. What could easily be deemed too disturbing and harrowing to bother with is anything but. And the Stones Cry Out makes for a refreshing change, one that is well worth dipping into.
Isobel Blackthorn for the TripFiction Team
Guest Review by Isobel Blackthorn
Isobel is a prolific Australian novelist. She writes both contemporary/literary, thrillers and dark fiction. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter and via her website.
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