A Song of Stone
Encyclopedia
Plot introduction
A novel about an aristocratAristocracy (class)
The aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in a society which has or once had a political system of Aristocracy. Aristocrats possess hereditary titles granted by a monarch, which once granted them feudal or legal privileges, or deriving, as in Ancient Greece and India,...
's experience of civil war
Civil war
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state....
.
Plot summary
Abel and Morgan live in a small castleCastle
A castle is a type of fortified structure built in Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars debate the scope of the word castle, but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble...
in an indeterminate place and time of civil war. They decide to abandon their home and join the refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
s seeking safety. A group of irregular
Irregular military
Irregular military refers to any non-standard military. Being defined by exclusion, there is significant variance in what comes under the term. It can refer to the type of military organization, or to the type of tactics used....
s led by "The Lieutenant" (or "Loot") stops them and takes them back to the castle, which they proceed to fortify as a base. The soldiers loot the castle, and Morgan is seduced by Loot. A rival faction attacks the castle with artillery
Artillery
Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...
and Abel is taken along with the fighters on a counter-attack
Counter-Attack
Counter-Attack is a 1945 war film starring Paul Muni and Marguerite Chapman as two Russians trapped in a collapsed building with seven enemy German soldiers during World War II...
. When they return, Abel almost shoots Loot and there is a violent and nihilistic ending.
A Song of Stone tells the frightening story of what happens when the normal rules of society break down. Themes of incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
, violence
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
and war
War
War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
are intertwined with the lives of the rather pompous but lyrical disgraced aristocrat
Aristocracy (class)
The aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in a society which has or once had a political system of Aristocracy. Aristocrats possess hereditary titles granted by a monarch, which once granted them feudal or legal privileges, or deriving, as in Ancient Greece and India,...
Abel, the vacuous and submissive Morgan, the ruthless Loot, and her soldiers with names like "Psycho", "Karma" and "Deathwish".
The story is told by Abel in the first person
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
. Abel describes Morgan's actions in the second person
Second-person narrative
The second-person narrative is a narrative mode in which the protagonist or another main character is referred to by employment of second-person personal pronouns and other kinds of addressing forms, for example the English second-person pronoun "you"....
, mostly when she is in his direct view.
As the invaders systematically loot and destroy Abel's family's ancestral home, Abel seems ambivalent to what is happening. Later, when the Lieutenant suggests a memorial for Abel's lifelong family retainer, who has just been killed, Abel and the reader realise that he does not know the servant's surname.
The violence of war is described graphically.
Literary significance & criticism
Stylistically, in its use of an unlikeable unreliable narratorUnreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually...
, the book resembles John Banville
John Banville
John Banville is an Irish novelist and screenwriter.Banville's breakthrough novel The Book of Evidence was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Guinness Peat Aviation award. His eighteenth novel, The Sea, won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. He was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize in 2011...
's The Book of Evidence and John Fowles
John Fowles
John Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Birth and family:...
' The Collector
The Collector
The Collector is the title of a 1963 novel by John Fowles. It was made into a movie in 1965.- Plot summary :The novel is about a lonely young man, Frederick Clegg, who works as a clerk in a city hall, and collects butterflies in his spare time...
. As in these books, the idea is that the reader comes to like the narrator a little in spite of their badness. Banks has acknowledged his admiration for J. G. Ballard
J. G. Ballard
James Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction...
and this also shows in this book.
The geographical and historical background is deliberately vague in the book. There is some stylistic similarity with Inversions.
Banks incorporated some previous work about the four medieval elements, and associated them with the four major characters in the book: fire with the Lieutenant, water with the noble, air with the noble's sister, earth with the castle.
The book was originally to have been called Feu de Joie, a reference to the custom of firing live rounds into the air as a celebration.