The Love of Stones
"... that we should all suffer, for so small a thing." 
Recently I'd been wondering what was wrong with me; I'd liked everything I read, almost, it would seem, without discernment. The Love of Stones revealed my string of good books for what it had been.
I bought my first diamond a little over a year ago. I wondered at the small (very small) stone; I fantasized about its origins: perhaps it had been mined by a Ugandan soldier deep in the heart of the Congo, perhaps it was mined in Sierra Leone and sold on the black market by a South African mercenary.
I wondered at what kind of pain made that stone, my tiny, insignificant diamond.
The Love of Stones is about Katharine Sterne, a jewish sociopath who is obsessed with a piece of jewelry called the Three Brethren. The secondary characters are Daniel and Salman Levy, Iraqi Jews who possess the Three Brethren for a short time. The larger theme is concerning the possession of people by their possessions, and the ugliness of this stark reality. Katharine's efforts lead her across the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.
The interesting parts of the book trace the history of the Three Brethren, their conception for the Duke of Burgundy, his assassination and their subsequent possession by his son, John the Fearless, it's owners from a "Queen Henrietta Margaret" (described as a King's consort) to various Dutch owners. It is fragmented here through a turn of events and its constituent pearls are the last trace Katharine has for the jewels.
In order to get the jewels from Europe to Iraq, where the jewels resurface as the possession of the Levy brothers, Hill uses some mysterious marsh Arabs - they give the stones to the brothers as a "gift" when they accompany one of their tribesmen back their exotic whereabouts from Baghdad.
We find Sterne in Turkey at the beginning of the story - her chase leads her to a small city in the western part of the country called Diyarbak'r. There she takes stead with a rich jewish widow named Van Glött who is obsessed with pearls. We follow her from Turkey back to London and then to Japan where the story reaches its conclusion.
Hill, who has also published some poetry, writes in uneven prose, sometimes melodic and enjoyable and at other times belabored and fanciful. I found myself annoyed with nearly all of the dialogue which seemed to follow this pattern: character A makes an assertion, character B contradicts with new assertion. The cycle may repeat itself a few times and then all dialogue ends.
Everyone of consequence in the story is Jewish (even the Japanese fisherman Hideki). Perhaps this was by intent, but it was thoroughly unbelievable (unless Hill somehow meant to communicate that only jews are obsessed with precious stones).
I got the feeling that Hill doesn't get people; his characters are one dimensional and even when he tries to give them emotion and context, it's an empty waste that doesn't provide insight or depth to the real "who" in the character. Contrast this with other writers, like David Mitchell, who can make a character so human - so knowable - without even using a biological narrative1.
And sometimes mediocre books, massively flawed, can be rescued by good ideas. If there was a good idea for The Love of Stones, it was the history of a set of jewels. The sad part was that, for me, this didn't make it worth the effort.
1Try this excerpt from Ghostwritten for an example of what I mean.
3:08:15 PM 
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