Bay of Souls: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Robert Stone (Author) "BY GAD, SIR, Michael Ahearn said to his son, Paul, "you present a distressing spectacle..." (more)
Key Phrases: poto mitan, bon ange, Van Dreele, Baron Samedi, Sister Margaret (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Stone's shortest novel, and his first in five years (after Damascus Gate, 1998), is a tight, brilliantly observed tale of one man's moral dissolution. Michael Ahearn is a respected professor of literature at a small college in the upper Midwest, with a lovely wife and 12-year-old son, but a vague dissatisfaction gnaws at him, exacerbated by a frightening incident while deer hunting and the near-death of his son from exposure. When Michael meets a new professor, the beautiful and electrifying Lara Purcell, he falls under her spell and launches an affair, endangering his marriage and his relationship with his son. At Lara's prompting, Michael travels with her to her Caribbean island home of St. Trinity, a nation rife with political violence, where Lara hopes to repossess the soul she believes has been captured by a voodoo goddess. The narrative undergoes a tonal shift on the troubled, threatening island, with events unfolding in a more intense, then nearly hallucinatory way, especially as Michael is himself possessed during a voodoo ceremony in which Lara hopes to reclaim her soul. A brief return to the U.S. mainland closes the novel on a somber note. All of Stone's characters here are etched in the acid of hard truth, with Stone probing deep-particularly into Michael, a sensitive, at times courageous man whose lust for the divine, for transcendence or salvation, is spoiled by a self-deception and self-indulgence that lead him astray and finally turn his life to ash. This is a novel of bold prose and subtle perceptions, a small, hard gem from a master writer.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Stone's seven novels seem very different on the surface, but they share a common theme: characters losing hold of their moorings. It may happen in Jerusalem (Damascus Gate ), or on the open sea (Outerbridge Reach ), or in Central America (A Flag for Sunrise )--all settings where it's easy enough to become unhinged--but the process by which Stone's people self-destruct is finally an internal one. The pattern holds in this agonizing account of how an egotistical English professor from the Midwest falls under the sway of a Caribbean femme fatale, who leads him into his own special heart of darkness. Michael Ahearn has a beautiful wife, charming young son, and comfy position at a small Minnesota college, but if you look closely, it's possible to detect some twitching just below the surface, signs that the professor is vulnerable to psychic turbulence. It comes in the form of Lara Purcell, a political science professor from the island of St. Trinity. Before you can say la belle dame sans merci, Stone is following Lara to the Caribbean, where he lands in the middle of a political insurrection, a smuggling enterprise, and a voudon-drenched struggle for Lara's soul. As always, Stone depicts the internal savaging of his hero's mind with chilling precision, and his evocation of Central America in turmoil deserves comparison with Graham Greene. This novel lacks the grand sweep of Damascus Gate, and Ahearn doesn't engender quite the empathy the story demands. Still, as a record of one man's failed attempt to confront the darkness of the universe, it is a kind of small gem: perfectly chiseled and revealing an icy clarity at its core that is as frightening as it is hypnotic. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First. edition (April 22, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395963494
• ISBN-13: 978-0395963494
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,067,164 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Bad story, December 17, 2004

By	lisatheratgirl "lisatheratgirl" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

I find myself agreeing with some of the other reviewers. This book isn't poor writing style, but the story is so far-fetched, improbable and just plain unbelievable that this book cant be saved. There are two related stories, neither of which really works. First there is a group of professors deer hunting in the winter in a godforsaken part of minnesota (this is the characters' opinion, not to offend anyone). A few strange things happen, and the main character comes home to find his son has been lost in the snow. The son nearly dies, but miraculously pulls through. The main character goes on to meet a woman professor who has just come to teach at the college. She dresses exotically, comes from a ficitious Caribbean island, goes in for a little S&M, and he falls head over heels, despite his jealous wife and little son. After the woman tells him her brother has died of AIDS, has xtolen her soul and given it to a voodoo queen who died two hundred years ago, and how dangerous it is to walk around in a body without a soul (a recitation that would send most men running scared), he decides to pack up and go down to the island with her. Although it's hard to tell what is really going on, things get wilder and wilder, with Haitian voodoo ceremonies, Colombian drug gangs, Latin-American style juntas supported by the U.S. governement. At this point I felt the author was just letting his imagination run wild or he didnt know what he was talking about. If you've read this far, you'll have a hard time finishing, although I did. You''ll wish you hadnt. I cant believe people act like this.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good but not at the level of past work, April 2, 2003

By	"hcearwickernyc" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

Bay of Souls is reminiscent of previous Stone novels such as A Flag For Sunrise and Outerbridge Reach. The writing here is effective but the whole thing seems a bit rushed. Themes and characterizations are not fleshed out as much as in his other novels. This book would make for a good introduction to the author's prose style (like the short story collection Bear and His Daughter) but overall it isn't as satisfying as his earlier work.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Voodoo, intrigue and middle-aged angst, July 27, 2003

By	Lleu Christopher "www.liminalworlds.com" (Hudson Valley, NY) - See all my reviews

Bay of Souls is a relatively short novel that is interesting but at times convoluted. I have only read one other book by Robert Stone, Damascus Gate, which I thought was brilliant. This one, though not without merit, was a bit of a disappointment to me. Michael Ahearn is a professor at a small rural college. He is married and has a twelve-year old son. Michael's life is not unhappy, but it has a bleak quality to it, similar to the cold Northern landscape he inhabits. His marriage is basically good, but his wife Kristin is a formidable and somewhat aloof woman who seems to intimidate him a little. In short, like many men approaching middle age, Michael is doing all right, but feels confined and has the desire to experience something new. This something comes in the form of Lara Purcell, an exotically beautiful professor from a Caribbean island called St. Trinity. They impulsively start an affair and when Lara returns to her island home after her brother dies, Michael comes along. This, to me, is where the novel falters. While the contrast between the rural American heartland and the Third World tropics is obviously a deliberate part of the book, the transition is so abrupt that it seemed to me like a different book altogether. On St. Trinity, Stone throws in a host of confusing, though typical (though more for a spy or suspense type novel) elements --corrupt officials, Columbian drug dealers, an intrepid reporter, American troops who covertly support a dictator. This part of the novel is a little cliched, with Michael running into the same cast of cloak-and-dagger type characters wherever he goes. The spirit of Voodoo also pervades the island, and this is central to the story. Lara believes her dead brother took possession of her soul before he died. She is now committed to retrieving it, which means she has to take part in some elaborate rituals. Lara is also deeply involved in all the political intrigue, in a way that is not well explained. For example, it is briefly noted that she was once a socialist (who may have had an affair with Castro) but then suddenly "switched sides" to support right wing extremists...why? Lara also apparently had some covert reason for teaching at Michael's college; this too is never explained. I suppose these questions are not really the point of the novel, but for me they were holes that I can more easily tolerate in a suspense thriller than a literary novel like this one. Finally, the Voodoo aspect of the tale remains ambiguous --are the occult forces real or only in the minds of the participants? I suppose it isn't necessarily crucial to know this, but I simply found myself with too many unanswered questions by the end of the book. Robert Stone is an interesting and original writer. His use of language is always creative and there are many turns of phrase that I admired in this book, even while I was less than satisfied with their context.