I found this an interesting depiction of pre historic times i.e. the end of the stone age and the beginning of the bronze. A period I had little knowledge of and had never considered. ( )

The Gift of Stones by Jim Crace was an odd little book (173 pages). It was on the surface the story of a village of stone age people who made flints for a living. The story revolved around an one-armed boy who became a worthless villager because he couldn't not help in the production of flint. He became a storyteller and became involved with an outsider widow and her young daughter. There is just nothing good that happens in this book, it's all death and rejection. I really did like this quote, though, "somewhere between the naval and the ankle, a man looses his senses."! The entire village was either killed or moved away when people with bronze weapons appeared. ( )

Somewhat disappointing - I almost gave it two stars. I liked the premise, but the language just seemed wrong. It is the story of a community of stone workers in a pre-Bronze Age world who had perfected the art of creating tools from stone. They worked with flint and created the sharpest and best knives, arrowheads, spears and other tools. They traded them for all other needs and had a very comfortable existence even though the work was grueling. Only one individual in the community had ever left the area to explore the outside world and he did so only because he was unable to work the stone due to a childhood injury. He became the village storyteller and sometimes prophet. Perhaps this story could be seen as a commentary on the dangers of a single product economy and the devastation that can occur when that product is no longer needed. Bronze arrowheads ARE vastly superior to flint. ( )

A beautifully written and evocative story of a disabled and disfigured boy who finds his calling in being a storyteller and a wanderer, always returning to his birth village, where proud flint carvers and merchants have little use for someone who can't work. The tale takes place as the Stone Age transitions into the Bronze Age, causing life-changing events for the stone workers. ( )

Gift of Stones is set in an unknown land, high on an ocean bluff (perhaps England, Ireland, Wales, or Scotland) but a very specific time, the tale end of the Stone Age, roughly 2,000 BCE. It's a richly imagined and beautifully written novel. Stones are the lifeblood of a an unnamed village. They support the dull and work-a-day stoners (craftspeople) and merchants whose days are spent quarrying, carving, and trading tools and implements. But change is in the winds and the arrival of distant traders from the sea with bronze implements means that the stoners' days are numbered. The tale is told by an unnamed, one armed story-teller and his unnamed adopted daughter, the child of Doe, a widow whom the story teller encounters and falls in love with in a "low heathland swept gently to the shore where thrift and black-tufted lichens lived side by side on rocks with barnacles and limpets." Doe and the story teller live in a primitive land and a hard time very different from our own. But their challenges are recognizable, despite the years that separate them from modernity. The human condition does not change that much with time. ( )