A warm, inventive, and multilayered novel about two families - one
made up largely of scientists, and the other of artists and mystics -
whose worlds collide in pursuit of a lost daughter
Mette, a twenty-year old programmer of visual effects for video games,
lives with her mother, Saskia, an aspiring playwright, in Brooklyn.
Mette is a private and socially awkward young woman, who finds something
consoling in repetitive mathematical calculations. But she has been
recently rejected in love, and feels stuck in an endless loop, no longer
certain of her place in the world.
As Brian Hall's new novel opens, Mette has gone missing. Her
disappearance forces Saskia to reunite with Mette's father, Mark, an
emotionally distant astronomy professor in Ithaca, to embark on a
journey together to find her. Mette's path will take her across America
and then to a fateful visit with her charismatic grandfather, Thomas,
who formerly ran the commune north of Ithaca where Saskia was raised,
and who now lives as a hermit in a windmill on a remote Danish island.
Playing out over nine decades and three generations, and stitching
together a dazzling array of subjects--from cosmology and classical
music to number theory and medieval mystery plays--The Stone Loves the
World is a story of love, longing, and scientific wonder. It offers a
moving reflection on the human search for truth, meaning, and connection
in an often incomprehensible universe, and on the genuine surprises that
the real world, and human society, can offer.
