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by Robert Stone
In 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 extract himself from his relationship with Maud Stack, his electrifying student, whose papers are always late and too long yet always incandescent. But Maud is a young woman whose passions are not easily contained or curtailed, and their union will quickly yield tragic and far-reaching consequences.
As in Robert Stone's most acclaimed novels, here he conjures a complex moral universe where nothing is black and white, even if the characters - always complicated, always compelling - wish it were. The stakes of Brookman and Maud's relationship prove higher than either one could have anticipated, pitting individuals against one another and against the institutions meant to protect them.
Death of the Black-Haired Girl is a powerful tale of infidelity, accountability, the allure of youth, the promise of absolution, and the notion that madness is everywhere, in plain sight.
"Stone 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
"Starred Review. The publication of any book by Stone is a literary event; this one is no exception." - Booklist
"Starred Review. An unusual but poised mix of noir and town-and-gown novel, bolstered by Stone's well-honed observational skills." – Kirkus
"Starred Review. Stone (Dog Soldiers; Damascus Gate) is a major literary figure, and this novel is readable, tense, and stimulating. Vivid scenes with razor-sharp dialog are plentiful; a powerful work." - Library Journal
This information about Death of the Black-Haired Girl was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
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Photo: Greg Martin
Robert Stone was the acclaimed author of nine novels, and two short story collections, plus several nonfiction works.
He won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1975 for his novel Dog Soldiers and was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and once for the PEN/Faulkner Awards. Time magazine included it in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1937 to a "family of Scottish Presbyterians and Irish Catholics who made their living as tugboat workers in New York harbor," he died in January 2015
Novels
A Hall of Mirrors (1967)
Dog Soldiers (1974)
A Flag for Sunrise (1981)
Children of Light (1986)
Outerbridge Reach (1992)
Damascus Gate (1998)
Bay of Souls (2003)
Death of the Black-Haired Girl (2013)
A Step Behind (2014)...
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