Product Description

Precious stones pass through the hands of many people, hands that leave no apparent trace. But traces are there all the same - impressions, like the atoms of hydrogen drawn to the surface of a diamond. This story charts three lives linked by one such jewel.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #202070 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"The lives of stones are the lives of the dead; which always lead back, never ahead." So says Katherine Sterne, a woman whose life is devoted to searching for a single jewel. "The Three Brethren", a brooch fashioned from rubies, diamonds and pearls has been in existence since the 15th century, passing through the hands of Europe's monarchs and, in spite of its exquisite beauty, leaving a trail of bloodshed and ruin in its wake. Captivated by the jewel's dark history, Katherine finds herself on an increasingly perilous quest to discover its current whereabouts. Searching the hidden quarters of modern-day London, Istanbul and Tokyo, she enters a world steeped in greed and ambition, a world where men are prepared to kill to safeguard the Brethren's secrets.

Two hundred years earlier, in 1833, a pair of Iraqi Jewish brothers leave Babylon, possessing only the clothes on their backs, and a hoard of precious stones. Arriving in London, they become jewellers to the new Queen, Victoria, and discover that friendship and loyalty are the most precious commodities of all.

Part love story, part historical thriller, The Love of Stones is a compelling excursion into the enduring qualities of human obsession. There is always a danger that novels so meticulously researched can become too heavy on the detail, neglecting the need to entertain in favour of lecturing the reader. But Hill's narrative is constructed with craftsman-like care, balancing the treasure-trove of fact with a story rich in insight and, ultimately, hope. --Matthew Baylis

Review
'A bold and intricate novel, a complex tapestry that ranges across time and space, but with a single theme: the manipulative power of exceptional jewels.' Penelope Lively, Independent 'A compelling thriller... Slicing through six centuries in a single sweep, the historic structure on to which Hill has crafted a gripping yarn binds together his themes about greed and ambition, and about our urge to possess the past in a vain quest for immortality.' Naomi Gryn, The Times

About the Author
Tobias Hill has published three award-winning collections of poetry. Skin, a collection of stories won the PEN/Macmillan Award for Fiction. Underground, his first novel, was published to great acclaim in 1999. A former poet in residence at London Zoo, Tobias Hill is a Visiting Fellow at Sussex University.

Customer Reviews

Lots of fun for gemstone junkies.
Filled with loads of fascinating facts about rubies, pearls, and diamonds, and bursting with historical information about Elizabethan and Victorian England, 19th century Baghdad, and the traders, dealers, and smugglers of the gemstone trade, this is a captivating novel of one woman's obsession with The Three Brethren. A "jewel" created for Queen Elizabeth and consisting of four pearls, three balas rubies, and a pyramid-shaped diamond, The Three Brethren mysteriously vanishes during her reign, and a very tough, modern woman, Katharine Sterne, is tracing and hoping to find it.

Author Hill keeps the reader's interest high by telling two intriguing, parallel stories--that of contemporary Katharine as she travels from London to Turkey and Japan in her search, and that of the two Levy brothers, Jews in 19th century "Mesopotamia," who find some jewels which they expect will allow them to begin a new life in Victorian England's jewel trade. Largely avoiding the excessive romanticism which this subject might have engendered, Hill matches his prose style to Katharine's obsessive, business-like approach to her jewel-hunt. Nothing else really matters to her, not even family, and Hill's prose echoes the urgency of her search, tending toward efficient, straightforward sentences of fact, with limited description and none of the lyrical flights so common to historical novels.

I found this to be both a virtue and a limitation. It does prevent this big novel from becoming soupy with sentiment. It also keeps the reader moving rapidly through several countries, time frames, and sometimes complex plot details. On the other hand, it is difficult to care much about Katharine's search when we cannot identify with her--we do not know, really, what she looks like or even how old she is. Perhaps this lack of an emotional hook is the reason that Hill, near the end of the book, inserts a number of melodramatic subplots, leading to an ending which is both sentimental and, I thought, unconvincing with its moralizing--too pat as it pertains to Katharine and her search. Still, this is loads of fun for lovers of jewels and history, terrific escape reading. Mary Whipple

In Defense of Katherine
I bought this book with trepidation. My own novel, The Blood Remembers, (completed in 1994 and only recently published) is also about a woman's quest and at its heart is a spinel, the balas ruby of The Love of Stones. As in Hill's novel there are also two historical threads interwoven with and paralleling a present day story. We must all be tapping into the vast collective where ideas and images rising simultaneously from the unconscious overflow into the imaginations of writers and artists.

In reviews from The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, as well as the Amazon.com site, the only flaw in this gem of a novel seems to be the inclusion (to use gemological terminology) of its protagonist, Katherine Sterne. If Sterne is not a lovable character, at least she is an interesting one. As I turned the book's well-written pages I kept asking myself, "Since when must we like the protagonist?" At first I'd wanted to be cheering for Katherine, but before long I was following her quest in fascination. Kate Sterne is not as mad as the collector of John Fowles' eponymous novel, but total self absorption, toughness and sang-froid can be traits of a collector's obsessive personality gone awry. The author, in describing the diamond might very well be describing his Kate--obviously the cold, driven character he intended her to be. In this way Hill keeps Sterne's quest from becoming yet another "sentimental journey."

"On the Moh scale of hardness the diamond is ten...but this is deceptive. For one thing diamond is the only gem which will combust, burning with a clear, quick white flame. It is as if the crystal were somehow organic...like skin and bone. And diamond is brittle as bone. There is hardness but no flexibility, and brittleness is an unforgiving quality."

But Katherine is enthralled with rubies. Rubies are a warm stone, implying heart, feeling, passion, the rubedo of alchemy, the philosopher's stone. Unfortunately Katherine does not go through the step by step alchemical process to deservedly earn the rubedo. We see her transformation at book's end, when Katherine's character all too hurriedly, all too unconvincingly reaches a degree of wholeness. It is at this point in the narrative that I find a small inclusion, but not enough of one to warrant giving The Love of Stones less than the five stars it deserves.
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For those lured to the lore and arcana of gemstones, this rich, evocative and literate novel can be read and re-read. Like her or not, Katherine Sterne has remained with me. She will be included in my roster of memorable, if not lovable women characters, along with Lawrence Durrell's Justine and Edith Wharton's Lily Bart.

A brilliant diamond
I only bought this book because Tobias Hill is judging a fiction competition I was planning to enter and I was interested to see what kind of fiction he wrote. I thought this was an exceptional novel and images and passages are still lingering on in my mind many weeks after finishing it. The prose is simple, poetic, fluid and beautiful and I personally found it very easy to relate to the characters, especially Katherine and Daniel. Other reviewers have criticised the apparent lack of established motivation for Katherine's quest for the Three Brethren but in my opinion this is a strength, not a weakness. In fact I found it a refreshing change from much contemporary literature, which sometimes over does its exploration of characters' psyches in its attempt to account for their every action. An obsession without grounding is both more realistic and more powerful than one that is mapped out in endless psychological detail. I was almost obsessed by the Three Brethren myself by the end. I also thought Hill did an excellent job of writing from a female view point - not every author is competent at adopting the perspective of the opposite gender. And to write competently and empathically about such a passive character as Daniel demonstrates great skill. I particularly liked Hill's character descriptions taken from portraits - it's almost as if he could see deeper into the souls of the sitters than did the original artists. Finally, Hill has a way of pacing his prose that forces you to read slowly - as a confirmed speed reader this was a new and satisfying experience for me and one I hope to repeat. As another reviewer said, the novel is not flawless, but that is definitely part of its charm.