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A Cry of Stone

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A Cry of Stone by Michael O'Brien is one of the most profound, moving and accessible novels I have ever read. This work has the depth of a Dostoevsky combined with the simplicity of the Gospels. O'Brien captures the essence of Christian spirituality; humility, love, and self-sacrifice in the absolutely unforgettable character of a poor, disabled Native American woman named Rose Wabos. This book will awaken your mind and stir your heart to its depths. Some parts were so poignant that I had to put the book down. Through Rose's simplicity, innocence and love, O'Brien exposes the fissures in contemporary civilization. If you need to be convinced that wisdom is found in humility, in littleness, then read this book. This work will go down as a masterpiece of literature, and Rose Wabos a character never to be forgotten. Do the world a favor and buy this for everyone on your Christmas list!

The Catholic novel has always occupied a precarious position. Most pious novels are of mediocre quality, while the solidly literary works (those of Graham Greene and Francois Mauriac, for example) are often ambiguous in their views on doctrine and morals.
Even those few works that combine literary merit with doctrinal and moral orthodoxy are rarely regarded highly. Most critics ignore or despise any overt Catholicism, particularly in modern fiction, while educated Catholics tend to regard novels as less important than the great works of apologetics, history and social comment.
Nevertheless, the last century has produced many novels on the lives of saints, from the Christian soap operas of Taylor Caldwell to the great political-military-religious histories of Louis de Wohl. There have also been lives of fictional saints, notably Georges Bernanos' Under the Sun of Satan.
The best Catholic fiction attempts to portray the drama of sin and sanctity, damnation and salvation, fought out on the battlefield of the human soul. However, it is much easier to depict evil than sanctity. Portraying a saint is one of the most difficult of a writer's tasks, as holiness is almost always unconvincing. This is what makes Michael O'Brien's book so remarkable.
A Cry of Stone is the fifth book in O'Brien's series, "Children of the Last Days", though it can be read independently. It is a work of honesty, great insight and powerful originality. In my view it confirms O'Brien as not only the premier Catholic novelist of our time but one of the greatest writers now living, even if the literary establishment continues to ignore him.
He is also the only author I know who is more successful in depicting good than evil. His subject, Rose W?bos, is one of the most extraordinary and memorable characters in modern fiction. A native of the Anishinabe people of northern Canada, she is a young woman with a deformed spine, described as "a four-foot-high, brown-skinned, hunchbacked woman whose hair was completely gray but whose eyes and expression were those of a child." (p.629) She has an unshakeable and uncompromising faith, a powerful but unique mystical sense, an ability to read characters, and a heart on fire with love for Christ. She is, in every sense, a saint.
Rose experiences within herself the confrontation between the modern world and the Catholic Faith, a conflict in which the Faith ultimately wins, not in any triumphalistic or argumentative sense, but simply through humility and love. Yet her life is, to all outward appearances, a failure; she calls herself a "nothing-person".
She is a tremendously gifted artist, but artistic success eludes her because her paintings are too demonstrably Catholic - a situation familiar to many artists and writers in recent years.1 However, she uses her failure to develop a spirituality based on art:
She was only a little charcoal stick in the hands of the Beloved. If not her, then another twig would have been sufficient for his purposes. (p. 581)
A Cry of Stone bears up very well against other novels about artists, such as Patrick White's The Vivisector: O'Brien has much more to teach us, and his certainty is more compelling than White's blind striving for mystical experience. Despite her failures and her deformities, Rose is far more human and more inspiring than White's Hurtle Duffield.
Is this a great novel? Many would think not. It is a long book with a rambling plot. Major characters disappear, others are introduced late and then seem to go nowhere. Among much writing of great beauty, there are some tiresome passages.
But O'Brien has achieved something unique: he has not only created a completely original saint but he has shown her from the inside: her thoughts and prayers and her stumbling yet unremitting path toward sanctity. With consummate skill, he combines Rose's Christian and non-Christian traditions in a synthesis that completely avoids syncretism. He shows us how the pagan insight into spiritual realities is not extinguished by Faith but is utterly transformed by the loving hand of God. Along the way, he drags Rose through many painful realities - racism, child abuse, betrayal, untimely death - but always with great sensitivity and yet a minimum of sentimentality. Paradoxically, the result of the complexity of her experience is a character of wonderful simplicity.
Surely this constitutes greatness.

I was stunned by this book. As an artist, I've never read a book that so thoroughly and truthfully captured not only the process of creating original works of art, but also the foibles and pretense of the "official" art community. And yet the main character, despite being a "small person" with virtually no resources other than faith in God, is completely believable and a tremendous inspiration. There is no doubt in mind that this book was blessed by the saints whose intercession O'Brien prayed for during its creation.

Michael O'Brien's book _is_ long, but I breezed through it in just a few days and was riveted by the story. It is extremely rare in a world fixated on revenge and fighting for "my piece of the pie" to find a book that actually breathes life into a character that has chosen the small way...the way of Christ. Yet Rose Wabos remains very human and very accessible. And at every turn, just when I would expect her to react as _I_ would react, she does something lovely...she chooses to act as Christ would have acted. Over and over I had revealed to me how far I, personally, have to go before I could ever begin to consider myself a real, consistent follower of Christ.

This book is a fictional tale that deals with how to live as Thomas A. Kempis advises us to in "The Imitation of Christ". In that book, Kempis suggests what we need to do to truly follow in Christ's footsteps. In Michael O'Brien's book, we get to see someone do just that, and in seeing it, it makes it somehow more possible, and more within our grasp.

This is the best work of fiction I've read in many, many years.

Just finished A CRY OF STONE and feel compelled to comment on Michael O'Brien's never-failing word art. The story of Rose Wabos, while seldom pretty, is astoundingly beautiful. Readers who have difficulty comprehending the Catholic Christian belief in the redemptive value of suffering will understand perfectly as they accompany Rose Wabos on her faith journey.

Spiritual insights are rich, bringing the common struggle to life even in disparate characters and stations in life. So rich are the insights, that like with DeSales' Introduction to the Devout Life, I found myself looking back to certain pages to refresh my enlightenment.

Enjoyed this book very much. Felt as though I had lost a good friend when the book ended. Michael O'Brien is gifted at creating his characters. I got a little bogged down in the middle with all the art philosophy, but it did not detract me from the story. It was a great illustration of how one can be so beloved of God and suffer so much. There was meaning and value in the suffering. The doubts and pain were so real! And yet it was a book with great wisdom and hope. More from Michael O'Brien!

Despite its formidable size and small print, I raced through this book in a few days of fascinated reading, and was very sorry to see it end. I cried, I laughed; I was intensely absorbed in the life of this "little person", Rose. O'Brien writes of Rose's inner state with an intensity and penetration that I don't recall ever meeting elsewhere in literature except, perhaps, as another reviewer mentions, in Dostoyevsky. I think this is very great writing in service to a great and noble subject. If you are more than half awake spiritually this book will rattle you right to your bones

This book delivers the inspirational, yet very realistic, example of a small saint. It is about a young Native girl's life, the very brevity of which, becomes an everlasting word, a word to go on being revealed, never to be destroyed.

The thread of her life, beautifully written out, is both consoling (there is beauty, and it is very real and very beautiful) and challenging (there is truth and it exists in cooperating fully with, in submission with love, to Jesus Christ).

The characters are numerous and very real. Two particular characters, one of whom has a very sharp personality and is married to the other, provide as believable outlets for a lot of social criticism and art criticism. At least those are the common names they go by. In this novel they are not mere criticisms, but deep reflection of truth.

In short, the young Native girl, Rose Wabos, has a particular gift of creation, of making pictures, "that you fall into". She also has a gift of clairvoyance, or that is, seeing into people's souls, also their pasts, when it is given her by God in order to help them. She possesses a very sensitive nature. The two gifts tend to blend into each other, or it seems one serves the other.

O Brien's use of language in this book I found could be heartbreaking. His ability to get the reader to look fully at the darkness of sin is really in proportion to his ability to get you to look fully at the beauty, the sheer gratuitous love, the unstoppable, infinite mercy, of the incarnation of Christ.

There is also a fair good deal of humour and some satire. There are some Waugh-like passages in style, but it is all still very Michael O Brien. It doesn't do the book justice to use these words, but nonetheless, the book is rich, full, varied, yet singular in its overall accomplishment. The ending leaves you with a silent shout.

Those who enjoyed the apocolyptical Father Elijah will probably dislike A Cry of Stone. This novel is closer to the family tale of Strangers and Sojourners, but unlike that flawed novel, it is better written and has more believable characters.

It follows the life of a quiet Ojibwe painter, Rose Wabos, as she travels from her childhood to womanhood, from the backwoods to the cities of modern Canada, meeting the poor, the wealthy, the wise and the unimportant, and seeing them through her eyes--the eyes of a compassionate woman, and an artist who sees the soul.

In some ways, the novel reminds me of the better works of Ojibwe writer Louise Erdrich: in that the spiritual and emotional outweigh the logical and the surface perceptions. But O'Brien writes of Rose's insights with more wisdom and complexity. What is the impotance of art? Does love overcome time and space? How does human interaction cure the wounds of the past? Are western ways of seeing only the rich and successful destroying the soul of our artists and our society?

Many will be put off by the openly Christian character whose prayers come from the depth of her personality; others, unfamiliar with the deep Christian faith of some Native Americans who do not see this as a rejection of their culture, will object to this deeply enrooted theme of this novel.

It just makes you appreciate the small things you have in life. Very touching. The story gets going as you read...you have to learn the characters, but once you do, it's a very tender story. Have read all his books...enjoy his style.