Book Review

Fyfield, Frances (2008).  ‘Blood From Stone’

By Derryll White
Frances Fyfield is a British criminal lawyer who writes, and I think writes very well. This is the second novel of hers I have read. The first had as its major character a lawyer who gave it all up to become a very successful hooker, and I was stunned by the richness of character and depth of story the author created. That led me to choose this novel.
When there is a storm, Fyfield takes the reader into the heart of it, tumult and wet and frigid. When there is sadness she has the reader in tears, in a tempest of conflicting emotions that somehow pulls one also into the centre of that. When there is love she enfolds the reader, melts the heart and tears up the eyes with both sadness and happiness. She is a very accomplished writer to my mind. Time and again in the presentation of the main legal mind in this novel, Marianne Shearer, QC, Fyfield brings to my mind Shakespeare’s exhortation to ‘kill all the lawyers!’
Henrietta Joyce, the main character in ‘Blood From Stone,’ has a love for and predisposition to fabric such that I have never before seen expressed in words. I have known women who possess this very real, consuming passion, but never have I read it so convincingly. Any weaver, quilter or seamstress will find something to love here. Lawyers may find things to hate as well as to take notice of. Any fan of the mystery genre will find wealth never-ending. Her characters are so well thought out, so meticulously constructed that readers will be, as I was, swept away in the discovery of self and love of detail not considered of note before. Readers will learn new ways to hate, to forgive, to give room to human foibles always before ignored.
And, in the end, I believe the novel is a discourse on love. Poignant, touching, sometimes chillingly frank, it addresses the question that haunts all of us.  an you die of not being loved? I have not read anything since Helen Wright’s book of short stories titled ‘Love’ that has led my mind to lust after love in such a convincing fashion. Read this book.
Excerpts from the novel:
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION – …he hated cars and loved the thinking times provided by trains.  He could retreat into his own skull on public transport, even when hemmed in by other bodies, he could read or think even when hanging from a strap in a swaying carriage, or could lose himself in watching.
PHOTOGRAPHER – Artist reduced to dogsbody.  It was a bad day for feeling bitter.  He had his camera ready for the morning’s unglamorous task, which was photographing road works….  The camera was in his hands.  He trained it on her the better to see.  She had shiny hair, which caught the light as she shook her head.  He thought he saw the suggestion of a reassuring smile through the lens, as if she had seen him or someone she knew and liked, and then she jumped.
LAWYERS – So why was he working so hard for him?  Because it was second nature to give the maximum effort to any client, just as it was instinctive to try every trick in the book to get the better of insurance companies, the Inland Revenue and all the manifestations of the State.  It was a game, and it did not matter for whom he played it.
FASHION – This room was not a museum, it was a tailor’s shop where someone might also come and find something which suited what they were, or what they had been, or what they might become, rather than what current fashion said they should be.
MALICIOUS – Marianne Shearer had relished going for the jugular.  She got high on the kind of interrogation that made a witness writhe with confusion.  She was flushed with triumph afterwards, like a hunter with a wounded animal, not even wanting to watch the kill.  Points scored by the wound, relationships ruined by unnecessary revelations, too bad.  The witness stand was a lonely place and if you volunteered for it, you were fair game. Win, win, win.
AUTO SALES – His name badge described him as ‘consultant’, which meant he was a car salesman who could not afford to buy the cheapest of the branded all-leather interior, air-conditioned Mercedes Benz and BMWs he was employed to persuade other people to buy.  He was the slightly ridiculous man who came to work from the suburbs on the tube, to cut a swathe amongst all this mechanized glamour while possessing none of it….  Frank was a man who was employed for his suit and his manner.
WOMEN – “All of them bitches, arent’t they, Frank?  The only thing that ever turns a man into a loser is a woman.  They get you every time.”
MEN – …maybe he had got it wrong, because men were easier to con than women, equally gullible while demanding less.  They required a different approach, sure; none of the physical seduction, although he didn’t rule it out; only the befriending, the playing of the role, and so many men were lonely, willing to compromise with the virtual, rather than the actual embrace.
URBAN – London was one hard city for a small-town man, but tonight, he felt positively fond of it; tried to stop himself smiling.  Smile on the Underground and people thought you were mad.
FATHER – Dad radiated angry innocence, blustering with a shame he could not understand, a horror that this was his fault.  The impotence of the male provider, failing to solve the problems of his children with blundering love alone.
DAUGHTERS – “I sank like a stone, Peter, for I loved that girl, you can’t help that, love’s where the devil takes you, you love one better than the other, and the trick’s not to show it.
LOVE – Do you suppose anyone loved Marianne Shearer? she asked.  Do you suppose he loved her?  I hope he did.  Could you die of not being loved, or want to die because you aren’t?
MATERIAL WEALTH – Mr. Joyce told anyone who would listen that his business was based on the fact that people owned so many things without the space to keep them; it thrived on an insufficiency of attics in modern houses and a need for ownership.  Things equal a sense of prosperity.
LOVE – Daring to love someone surely meant venturing out and shouting about it.
COPING – Whenever he was at a loss with a person, Thomas would make himself wonder what they were like when having an orgasm.  It was a way of cutting them down to size….
WINNING – “Not as far as she was concerned.  The only way to win, she said, was wanting to win at all costs, and people like you don’t want it enough; have never been hungry enough, so you lose every time.”

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