Many Stones (Hardcover)

by Carolyn Coman (Author) "COME IN," I SAY TO JOSH AS I TURN the key in the lock and push open the front door..." (more)
Key Phrases: South Africa, Father Alan, Nelson Mandela (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
On a two-week pilgrimage to South Africa from Rockville, Maryland, 16-year-old Berry and her estranged father attempt to come to terms with the murder, a year earlier, of Berry's sister Laura when she was volunteering at a Capetown school. Angry, sour, and ferociously cynical, Berry struggles with the concept of "truth and reconciliation," both for South Africa and in her personal life. Her father's efforts to educate his daughter about the country's political climate in the wake of apartheid are met with cold resistance: "He makes whatever is inside me catch fire. I hate everything. And I feel ashamed, which, for all I know, is why my father brought me here--Mr. Expense Account himself..." The delicious oblivion she finds underwater when doing laps on the swim team back home--or kissing her boyfriend Josh--or in the comforting stones she likes to pile on her chest when she's in her room don't seem to help her move beyond her despair and anger.

Carolyn Coman, author of the highly acclaimed and powerful Bee and Jacky, What Jamie Saw, and Tell Me Everything, seems to have direct access to the souls of troubled teens, plumbing the not-always-pretty depths of her characters. But the current-events lessons and the soul-searching of Many Stones don't redeem the novel from its heavy, depressing tone that emanates from Berry's troubled teen self. While the landscape of Berry's psyche is deftly captured, her surly stance is tiresome and relentless, not letting up until the very last pages when she has "the big meltdown" with her father, and then finally finds her voice at her sister's memorial service. (Ages 13 and older) --Emilie Coulter

From Publishers Weekly
Coman (What Jamie Saw) adopts some conventions of the problem novel in this ambitious work about forgiveness. Berry's sister, Laura, has been murdered in South Africa, where she was volunteering at a school, and Berry, still smarting from her divorced father's perceived rejection of the family, is becoming angry and isolated. Early on she explains that she collects stones and stacks them on her chest so that she can feel their heft and "know there's something there to be weighted." Obliged to accompany her loathed father to South Africa for a memorial service, Berry, who narrates, is sure so much time with her father will be disastrous. But when they meet South Africans searching for ways to forgive after apartheid, Berry and her father realize they must begin their own reconciliation. As Berry confronts the devastation of a race of people subjected to degradation, imprisonment and torture, her own experiences come to seem almost trivial by comparison: "I feel smaller and smaller.... It's like big, important history drapes over everything here in South Africa.... Nothing I know comes close to being a matter of life and death," she realizes. The implied parallel, however, is frequently jarringAexactly what has Berry suffered at the hands of her father, and how unforgivable is it? The ending, like the controlling device, is unusually neat for Coman. But there is gripping writing here, from the lightning-quick portraits of passing players to the descriptions of South Africa to the convincingly clipped conversations between daughter and