Customer Reviews

Stone Virgin

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A disappointment after Unsworth's SACRED HUNGER. A British restorer works on an early quattrocento Madonna on a Venetian church. In doing so, he becomes psychically complicit in the unknown sculptor's passion for his original model, and eventually physically involved with the model (and wife) of a contemporary sculptor who is later found dead. The three parallel stories dealing with the various periods (1432, 1793, and 1972) interleave but do not truly interlock. Fortunately, more time is spent on the modern story than the two earlier ones, which are told in an epistolary style that never catches fire. Unsworth's descriptions of Venice and its lagoon nicely catch its character, especially in the less visited areas, and his unfolding of the art-historical mystery is not without interest. But the people in the book seem created to animate their setting as in a Canaletto canvas, rather than leading independent lives on their own.

There are other novels which weave a fiction around real or imagined works of art, such as Tracy Chevalier's GIRL WITH THE PEARL EARRING and Iain Pears' THE RAPHAEL AFFAIR. Both these authors also wrote books set in multiple historical periods: Chevalier's THE VIRGIN BLUE and Pears' masterpiece THE DREAM OF SCIPIO. All of these belong to the 1990s. Published in 1986, Unsworth's book seems a comparatively early example of such trends in what one might call the quasi-erudite popular novel. Though not challenging either Chevalier or Pears at their best, THE STONE VIRGIN easily eclipses most other derivatives of the genre, such as Dan Brown's dreadful THE DA VINCI CODE or the entire oeuvre of Arturo Pérez-Reverte.

Finally, a quibble. I suppose it was inevitable that Norton should have put a sculpture on the paperback cover, but I believe that the one they chose is a couple of centuries too late to be the one in the book!

The opening of the book with the unknown accused is fantastic, one cannot help to continue reading. As the book unravels fragmenst and anecdotes of the history of the Virgin, it is woven in with the current work of the resoterer in an intricate way, that leaves you no room to put the book down. Read it and give youself a good dosage of history, mystery and sensualism.

Have you ever been drawn to an icon? An image so beautiful that it haunts you and never really leaves your senses? So goes the story in "Stone Virgin." Personally, I am a willing victim of just such a vision, and I have found in this vivid rendering another's soul also captivated by an inexplicable love of image, and vexed by limitless longing. There is no love greater than that in our imagination, that which we can only dream about. Reality has a hard time measuring up to our ideals. As a result, there is room for fantasy and secret desires of a near-sacred quality in all of our lives, those wisps of knowing-yet-not-knowing that drive our abilities to seek what is seldom found. Touching it, if even briefly, renews the quest to have it completely. "Stone Virgin" facilitates the journey by offering a sometimes-tortured, but always mystical entry into a journey that seeks beauty and completeness. If you are not deeply moved by this tale, you have not yet begun your own journey.

A great web of stories that makes you really think of the power that people exert over others. Especially the power of this stone virgin and how she affected (affects) those who come in contact with her. Will history continue to repeat itself? Beautifully written.

Simon Raikes is restoring an enigmatic stone Madonna that graces the front of a medieval church in Venice. As he prepares his work, he is overtaken by visions, and he soon becomes obsessed with discovering the history of the unusual, subtly erotic statue. Simon's own fate becomes inextricably enmeshed with that of the original sculptor, and he finds himself making choices that would previously been abhorrent to him.

Stone Virgin is a complex, proficient morality tale that examines the dark underside of desire, whether it be carnality, pride, ambition, or cupidity. Within these pages, the age old adage that history repeats itself plays out in the lives of individuals, rather than on the world stage. How easy it is to succumb to temptation when one's secret heart's desire is within reach.

Can an act of artistic creation, motivated by whatever, entrap the emotions and sensibilities of those involved and then be so successful, subliminally, that it re-invokes the same emotions in those that encounter it? That is one hopeless sentence, but Barry Unsworth's book really does address issues of iconography and the power of art. He does it again in Losing Nelson, but there the enduring truth is myth, not the icon.

While beautifully written, The Stone Virgin ultimately centers around acts of base evil, murders noteworthy for their sociopathic cruelty, contempt for justice, and worst of all - their utter triviality. The combination of murder for trivial reasons is stomach turning. I finished the book feeling dirty and fouled. It was an extremely disappointing experience. It's almost that the author wanted to magnify horror by soft and beautiful presentation. I, for one, don't need any "enlightenment" as to this distorted and malignant view of meaning or life. It was a shame to find that such a gifted writer is so obsessed with filth in the name of some sort of deep truth. Anyone who is caught up in the beautiful imagery, the sculpture, or the various interweaving stories is just that - caught - in an emotional setup designed to get you to lower your boundaries for the final emotional rape of the tawdry murders and psychopathic and cowardly responses. Get a clue - this is not high art. Instead, it is the story of the degradation of the human spirit, all under the false cover of the exaltation of the human spirit. As such, it will fool most of the people, most of the time. It's one of the few books I've ever thrown in the garbage after finishing. I don't recommend it.