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Title: Washed Up
Review: Stone works best on a grand scheme where his grandiose themes have time to build and then draw the reader in. Here the characters seem flat and the prose is ordinary compared to his former lyrical masterpieces like "Hall of Mirrors" and "Dog SOldiers." It is always a bad sign when writers start writing novels about writers and teachers. It means they are running out of ideas. And while Stone is a contemporary master, his last three novels "Outerbridge Reach," "Damascus Gate" and "Bay of Souls" go from average to below average to downright bad. Time it seems has had a deleterious effect on Stone's storytelling ability, as he is forced to rehash age old revolutionary themes that seemed so ripe with pertinence back in the 60s and 70's. Still, I have no doubt that Stone can pull out an "Old Man in the Sea" like Poppa Hemingway did late in his career. For a short gem of a novel exploring loss and rediscovery see Denis Johnson's "Name of the World."
