Stone's Fall
by Iain Pears

Release Date: 7th May 2009
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
ISBN: 978 0 2240 8179 5
RRP: £18.99

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Beguiling and addictive as ever a story was...

Stone’s fall is a story of such girth that it is entirely conceivable that its readers are open to numerous interpretations of what lies within its pages. Some will believe it to be a parody; a pastiche of current events that have conspired to up heave the delicate balance of global high finance. Some will consider it a rather humorous and benign account of the industrial age, with rose tinted spectacles firmly in place. Others will contemplate the politico stance of the author as one who is astutely observing the sad decent of the British Government to that of being a mere pawn of financial institutions; for instead of telling the City it must put its own house in order, today’s Government has risked billions in a rather fuddled attempt to bolster a failing banking industry that had grown disproportionately due to its all consuming greed and avarice. Yet others will be assuaged by the deeply moving humanitarian elements of Pears’ tale; that of a young woman of some disrepute having the wherewithal and fortitude to recreate herself into someone of considerable wealth and desirability; or perhaps that of a young man whose actions have far reaching consequences that culminate the death and ruin of many poor souls; then again, maybe it is a unique love story, mixed with reproachable behaviour, unscrupulous decisions and having a disastrous and devastating consequence that one will simply not see coming.

What it is not is straightforward. Rather, it is a most intriguing and complex dissembling of a man’s life and the far-reaching ripples of cause and effect. Initially then, it is not very much to do with Stone at all; a rather comical and thoroughly entertaining romp with an infatuated journalist who is nothing more than a dog on a lead being led hither and thither. Next is a most peculiar turn of events as the accounts of an apparently ground-breaking spy, Henry Cort, is passed before scrabbling eyes. Pears has you by now, hook, line and sinker; you have to know the outcome, must see the connections. Finally, Stone’s own salutary voice reels in the various strands that are splayed over the previous pages (and there are not a few of them), although at the end, one is not certain whether one is altogether happy with the outcome.

Stone’s Fall is a tale of cloak and dagger, of love lost and gained, trickery and treachery, debauched behaviour and reserved etiquette, business acumen and politico observation. Money, power, greed, lust, love, envy and above all an oddly illuminating joviality that belies the author’s tease; for Stone’s Fall is just that: a tease. A game of intellect and high stakes made trivial and whimsical. Pears is almost Shakespearean in his feat of manipulating his readers into taking seriously the nonsensical, the outlandish and the absurd; and yet, even though we know by the end that we have been duped, we still feel moved to tears for the folly of it all. And if you do not perceive it to be the case, perhaps you will simply agree that Pears is in a class of his own; no one else could possibly succeed in making the world of big finance so hugely entertaining.

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