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4.32 AVERAGE
4.32 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
dark
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
"His aunt bather the head wound. He lay in the dark room unable to sleep, and late at night got out of bed and went to stand at the window. There was peace up there, in that sky of stars. What he wanted was to attain that peace. But that peace was impossible. The world was here, and it was violent and brutal. Wasps killed spiders and spiders killed flies. That was the Law. The world made sensitivity a curse; one had to live within the Law."
"There has been a return of buried hatreds; forgotten walls had shot up again between him and the world."
"And we want to breathe air, we don't want to think about this race business twenty-four hours a day. We don't want our noses pushed down into it for the seventy-odd years of our lives. But you have to keep thinking about it; they force you to think about it all the time."
"But he could not help thinking about race in Paris or anywhere. How can you help thinking about the thing that dominates your life?"
"Every oppressed group is oppressed in a different way and has a different story."
"Simeon thought, was everybody a racist toward somebody else, then? He had never given much thought to prejudice against Jews, he had been too much personally involved in the question of color."
"I am nervous about something in you. There is a reason why you hunt out your Algerian friends. It is because they are in a troubled situation. I have a feeling that you cannot simply accept happiness. You have a good life, a nice apartment, enough money, but you cannot accept it. Something bothers you inside, so you go and look for complications. I am afraid for you."
"Look, I can't do things out of my head, I got to do them out of my heart."
"You want to integrate with that? They was my enemies, there was a fight on, a long war been going on since they took the first slave there, but what kinda war was that when your aim was to be integrated into the enemy?"
"He looked at his black patch in the mirror, wondering what he was. People were identified by their occupations, their actions. Did he, then, have no identity? Was he a shadow, a passive observer? He had a feeling of desperation; he wanted to be alive."
The fugitive, the white man, the brother
"There has been a return of buried hatreds; forgotten walls had shot up again between him and the world."
"And we want to breathe air, we don't want to think about this race business twenty-four hours a day. We don't want our noses pushed down into it for the seventy-odd years of our lives. But you have to keep thinking about it; they force you to think about it all the time."
"But he could not help thinking about race in Paris or anywhere. How can you help thinking about the thing that dominates your life?"
"Every oppressed group is oppressed in a different way and has a different story."
"Simeon thought, was everybody a racist toward somebody else, then? He had never given much thought to prejudice against Jews, he had been too much personally involved in the question of color."
"I am nervous about something in you. There is a reason why you hunt out your Algerian friends. It is because they are in a troubled situation. I have a feeling that you cannot simply accept happiness. You have a good life, a nice apartment, enough money, but you cannot accept it. Something bothers you inside, so you go and look for complications. I am afraid for you."
"Look, I can't do things out of my head, I got to do them out of my heart."
"You want to integrate with that? They was my enemies, there was a fight on, a long war been going on since they took the first slave there, but what kinda war was that when your aim was to be integrated into the enemy?"
"He looked at his black patch in the mirror, wondering what he was. People were identified by their occupations, their actions. Did he, then, have no identity? Was he a shadow, a passive observer? He had a feeling of desperation; he wanted to be alive."
The fugitive, the white man, the brother
A book I discovered through researching the 1961 police massacre of Algerians, I wasn't really expecting much. I figured it would be a neat little protest book, but that was really unfair of me: Smith does a really great job balancing and jostling all the very many victimhoods of the 20th century. All the racial hatreds, of Arabs, of Blacks, of Jews are shown in concert and conflicting in a way that's much more elegant than I'm making it sound.
So what you have is this beautiful fragment of life in the 1960s, particularly life in Paris for Black Americans. The book does a great job describing the willfull blindness of expatriates and the ways in which minorities are set off each other.
As a character-driven plot, The Stone Face isn't that great. There's not a ton of growth outside the main character, the well-named Simeon. There's not a ton of delicacy: all the men are manly men and all the women are beautiful.
What it does have is great scenery and an interesting message, displayed engagingly. It's more agitprop than novel. But man, it's really really good agitprop.
So what you have is this beautiful fragment of life in the 1960s, particularly life in Paris for Black Americans. The book does a great job describing the willfull blindness of expatriates and the ways in which minorities are set off each other.
As a character-driven plot, The Stone Face isn't that great. There's not a ton of growth outside the main character, the well-named Simeon. There's not a ton of delicacy: all the men are manly men and all the women are beautiful.
What it does have is great scenery and an interesting message, displayed engagingly. It's more agitprop than novel. But man, it's really really good agitprop.
dark
sad
tense
slow-paced
A wonderful surprise that is always coasting down the lane of horrors and inhumanity, pointing out the stone face along the sidestreets and the fire escapes, in the suburbs and the countryside; whether they've skin of black, or the predominant white, whether they're communists or fascists or centrists, whether they've grown in the jungles of the Congo, or the bare subdivisions of the American midwest, or even the embattled streets of French Algeria; the stone face is the enemy of all who fear, suffer, and fight for their lives, their freedom. Before we can live happily, there must be no stone face lying on the horizon, and so, we shall never live happily---no, we shall, instead, live consciously. Happy, only in service of killing the stone face, by any means necessary---loving openly, fighting the battles we're asked for those we never can quite understand fully: resisting any semblance of that stonish gaze.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism, Rape
challenging
dark
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This book broke me in so many ways. I don't even know where to begin, but all I can say is that The Stone Face is captivating. Beautiful. Thought-provoking. Most importantly, it is a must-read.
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated