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BAY OF SOULS is the seventh --- and shortest --- book Robert Stone has written in a long, distinguished career that began with a fellowship at Stanford's creative writing program where he studied with Wallace Stegner. Since his first novel, A HALL OF MIRRORS, Stone has alternated publication of novels and one collection of short stories with the teaching of writing on several college campuses across the country. In style as well as in length, BAY OF SOULS might have been Stone's most accessible book to the mainstream of readers. Having already received pre-publication, starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus and Library Journal, this book is unlikely to suffer much from one review that bestows criticism along with the accolades.
All of Robert Stone's books, in one way or another, attempt to answer life's big question: Does an individual's life have meaning? More specifically, does the life of a white American male have meaning? Only the setting and the age of the protagonist changes --- and, I would argue, the way that it has changed here lessens the significance of the book, when compared to the author's previous work.
In BAY OF SOULS the protagonist is Michael Ahearn, an English professor at a Midwestern University (unspecified, except for its being in a northern plains state, in "flyover country"). Michael is a native of the area in which he teaches. He is a nice guy and handsome enough that, in his youth, people fell silent for a beat when he came into a room at a party, yet self-deprecating enough to think of himself as an overeducated farm boy. He's married to Kristin, a tall, long-boned woman of Viking descent with dark hair, icy eyes and a tough temperament; she also teaches. They are the parents of Paul, an intelligent twelve-year-old who attends a Catholic school because they want him to have an opportunity to grow up with the religious faith they both --- she a Lutheran, he a Catholic --- retain only tenuously. All is well enough with the small family until two things happen: Paul gets lost in the snow and almost dies, while Michael meets a woman who is as out of place as an orchid in snow.
The woman's name is Marie-Claire Purcell, called Lara for some reason that goes unexplained. She too is a professor, of political science, but she's a newcomer on the campus and her background is so atypical that Michael investigates via the Internet; he concludes that she is a spy in hiding. She's been stashed in relative isolation by the government, presumably the CIA, for her own protection. Lara has American citizenship because her mother was an American and she, Lara, was born in New Orleans. But her home is on the island of St. Trinity in the Caribbean and her roots are deep in that culture, despite the apparent whiteness of her skin.
The book begins with an archetypal hunting scene. In fact, every character and each major event in BAY OF SOULS is an archetype. Michael is the genial, hapless fool in the Tarot deck, a role heavily foreshadowed in the opening hunting scene. Kristin is the Ice Princess. Lara is the Whore of Babylon --- and Michael knows it, calling her the Great Whore in his mind. This does not deter him from having an affair with her.
Lara believes she has no soul, that her soul was taken from her years ago by her twin brother and now kept with his own soul in the ocean after he died of AIDS a year ago. Lara's religion is voudun, or voodoo. The people of St. Trinity believe the souls of their dead are kept for one year at the bottom of their island's bay, in a kind of purgatory. At the end of a year, they must perform a ritual to bring the dead soul up out of the bay and allow them to continue on, either to heaven or hell. Lara returns to St. Trinity for the ritual, believing that at this time she can reclaim her own soul. She takes Michael with her. He leaves his home and family in order to go. Ostensibly, this is a week's vacation for the purpose of diving in the Caribbean --- but in reality it's an archetypal journey, a descent into the unknown, of the sort that used to be marked on maps with a notation "here be monsters."
Lara's character is more complex than Michael allows or wants her to be. He desires her for her sexuality and her physical vitality. But she believes she is genuinely in love with him and that he may be a part of her redemption --- he becomes essential to her effort to get back her soul.
The sheer craftsmanship of Robert Stone's writing style in BAY OF SOULS cannot be faulted; to say that it is perhaps self-consciously Faulknerian or Hemingway-esque would be quibbling when he has accomplished this to such perfection. Nor can his intent to tackle the big questions of identity, faith and redemption. One might even argue that he has shown courage in presenting a protagonist whose profession and proclivities are so close to his own. Yet there is little that is original in BAY OF SOULS --- the material is solipsistic and self-referential and this trivializes a tale meant to be universal in scope. Stone uses the archetypes to reach for greatness, but in my opinion he falls short.
--- Reviewed by Ava Dianne Day
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