Death of the Black-Haired Girl Paperback - 2014

Summary

From the rear cover

A New York Times Book Review Editors Choice
Fast-paced [and] riveting . . . Stone is one of our transcendently great American novelists. Madison Smartt Bell
Brilliant. Washington Post
At an elite college in a once-decaying New England city, Steven Brookman has come to a decision. A brilliant but careless professor, he has determined that for the sake of his marriage, and his soul, he must end his relationship with Maud Stack, his electrifying student, whose papers are always late yet always incandescent. But Maud is a young woman whose passions are not easily curtailed, and their union will quickly yield tragic and far-reaching consequences.
Death of the Black-Haired Girl is an irresistible tale of infidelity, accountability, the allure of youth, the promise of absolution, and the notion that madness is everywhere, in plain sight.
At once unsparing and generous in its vision of humanity, by turns propulsive and poetic, Death of the Black-Haired Girl is wise, brave, and beautifully just. Boston Globe
Unsettling and tightly wrought and a worthy cautionary tale about capital-C consequences. Entertainment Weekly
A taut, forceful, lacerating novel, full of beautifully crafted language. Los Angeles Review of Books
ROBERT STONE is the author of seven previous novels, including Dog Soldiers, which won the National Book Award, and the modern classics Outerbridge Reach and Damascus Gate. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA, Stone is considered one of America s greatest living writers.
Author photograph (c) Phyllis Rose
MARINER
www.marinerbooks.com
$14.95
ISBN 978-0-544-22779-8
Fiction
"

Media reviews

"In his fiction, Robert Stone is immersed no less profoundly in envisioning the drama of human evil in action than was the great French Catholic novelist and Nobel Laureate, Francois Mauriac.
     Not only with his brilliant new novel, Death of the Black-Haired Girl but from the early novels such as Dog Soldiers and A Flag at Sunrise down to later books like Damascus Gate and Bay of Souls, he has demonstrated again and again that he is no less a master than Mauriac of the tragic novel—of depicting the fatal inner workings of revenge, hatred, betrayal, and zealotry—and that, like Mauriac, he is the pitiless guardian of a cast of sufferers on whose tribulations he manages to bestow a kind of shattered mercy."
—Philip Roth

"The death of a star student at an upper-crust university unsettles friends, faculty and family in a piercing novel from veteran novelist Stone… A critique of tribalism of all sorts—religious, academic, police—…[Death of the Black-Haired Girl is] an unusual but poised mix of noir and town-and-gown novel, bolstered by Stone’s well-honed observational skills."
—Kirkus (starred review)

"Robert Stone is one of our transcendently great American novelists. In Death of the Black-Haired Girl he turns an unflinching gaze into the darkest crevices of the human psyche, where glimmers of redemption are extremely hard-won. This fast-paced, riveting novel reflects a vivid and unforgettable image of what we have made of ourselves, in this country, at the turn of 21st century so far."
—Madison Smartt Bell

"Robert Stone is a vastly intelligent and entertaining writer, a divinely troubled holy terror ever in pursuit of an absconded God and His purported love. Stone’s superb work with its gallery of remarkable characters is further enhanced here by his repellently smug professor, Steve Brookman, and the black-haired girl’s hopelessly grieving father, Eddie Stack."
—Joy Williams

"Stone (Damascus Gate) imbues his characters with a rare depth that makes each one worthy of his or her own novel. With its atmosphere of dread starting on page one, this story will haunt readers for some time."—Publishers Weekly

Citations

• New York Times Book Review, 08/03/2014, Page 28