A Song Of Stone: A weighty tale of self destruction

The roads are clogged with people fleeing from the ravages of an anonymous European war, when two of the refugees come to the notice of a young lieutenant.

Abel is the narrator of the story. Fallen gentry, finally abandoning the family home — a smallish castle — he shared with his companion, Morgan, in favour of a safer life elsewhere. After his encounter with the lieutenant and her troops, he is forced to return home with a small group of guerillas as his new house guests.

This is an odd story, both in plot and the manner in which it is told — completely from Abel’s point of view. At first his detachment is both forgivable and understandable — after all, he is in the middle of a war — but as the story unfolds he is revealed to be an intensely dislikable character. He is obsessed with the past and far happier to wallow there in self pity than confront his captors (he may lose, oh the embarrassment) and regain his freedom.

The story is quite blatant in the way it colours everything from the one perspective, never giving a real overall look at how the war was started, when it started, who’s fighting whom, where the tale is set or any background information of import. Abel doesn’t seem to care, so it isn’t considered an important story element — to him the war is a minor inconvenience that will eventually go away, allowing him to return to his decadent life.

Facets of Abel’s past life are slowly revealed throughout the narrative. A child of troubled parents, there are hints that his father may have been another man, as his father is less than enamored with his son. Raised among servants who cater to his every whim, he goes out of his way to rock the society of his peers with debauchery and a scandalous relationship. He is a man cast adrift from life and living in his own private world of sex and scandal. The extended interludes of Abel’s past sexual exploits are extremely tedious, serving more to bore than to titillate.

Watching Abel’s effete self centred world unravel and seeing him spiral deeper into self destruction is interesting, but because of the character’s nature he is totally inaccessible. In fact, none of the characters are. Morgan is even more self obsessed than Abel and the lieutenant is just as bad in her own way.

If you’re an Iain Banks fan you may enjoy this book. But while I’ve found some of his other books to be distant and missing that certain undefinable something that grabs me as a reader, this book may as well be on another planet. The dialogue style of the text just made me want somebody to shoot Abel and be done with it — but perhaps that was Iain Banks’ intention all along.