Customer Reviews

The Stone Garden: The Epic Life of Billy the Kid

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Brooks'new novel is a poetic tour de force, a literary exploration of the old west as only the most playful and -- simultaneously -- the most poignant imagination could bring to it. I was captured from the first sentences: a dead Billy the Kid -- or perhaps not-dead Billy the Kid -- denies all, recalls all. This is not your father's Western. It has little likeness to the traditional genre, but it has everything to do with contemporary literature, that kind of delightful exploration of truth which is always multiple and never quite certain of itself. Brooks is able to make Billy the Kid a vulnerable, wistful poet of sorts, one who reads Shakespeare and Voltaire, and who kills villains only when forced to. This Billy the Kid is sometimes lonely, sometimes stupid, sometimes conflicted, but always full of a wistful reflection on the human condition, and always full of sad dreams, "like a bird whose wings are boken," as Brooks puts it. In the end, a dying Billy recognizes in his journal that "All the words in the world cannot tell the true story of even a single life." The only problem with this novel was that it had to end.

After reading this piece I closed the book and thought, "That's a few hours of my life I'll never get back." "That's a few hours of my life I'll never get back." The book is full of references to other author's works in an obvious and obnoxious attempt to show his literary knowledge. It is filled with Constant and Incessant repetition of lines. After reading once that "I never forget," I don't need to read it a second time. Between one line and the next, I don't forget either. The book is littered with these melodramatic repeating of statements. It also has bad poems strewn throughout the book as well and cannot tell by the context if it is the authors bad poems or Billy's because there IS NO context to them; they're just randomly placed, sometimes mid-stream-of-thought. The writing read like a really bad script. Like a really bad script. The book seemed as though it struggled to choose between being a book and being a screenplay. When sentences are said twice in a row as often as they are it only makes you think of bad movie lines. Bad movie lines. The descriptions of romantic acts certainly did not put you in the moment but rather only made you feel that same uncomfortable feeling one gets when watching a loved one bomb on stage. Like watching a loved one bomb on stage. Descriptions of everything from emotions to scenery were so awkward that I couldn't tell if it was being written FOR a teenager or BY one. There was no "color" in his wording and it had the feel of a young school child experimenting with the use of a word he just discovered and uses everywhere. There were several cases where a not so creative adjective would be used multiple times in one sentence or several times within the span of a few. When I hear the sky described as a "naked sky" I am not looking to hear that you are now "laying under that naked sky" and then in the next line read that you're "being watched by the naked sky". I got it!! The damn sky is naked and you lack the vocabulary and literary skills to find a new adjective for crying out loud!! You can't find another description for the night sky? Brooks reminds me of my brother at 12 who found the word "sublime" and used it everywhere, usually several times in a sentence and almost always out of context. One can't help but think this book is written by a kid. One can't help but think this book is written by a kid who has a small vocabulary, poor descriptive skills due to limited experience, and an unrefined concept of what constitutes drama. I'm pretty sure so far MY repetition of phrases up to this point probably hasn't added any sense of passion to my prose but rather annoyed or agitated the reader into thinking how corny and cheesy the writing style is. How corny and cheesy it is indeed!

Excellent book especially in light of new facts re: Billy the Kid and his 'death'.
Bill Brooks is an exceptional author and you can't go wrong with any of his books..especially the Westerns. jm