A Stone Boat

An urgent, closely observed, deeply conflicted, elegant account . . . a winning blend of emotional intensity and elevated lyricism." (Los Angeles Times) The New York Times Book Review praised A Stone Boat as "a shimmering remembrance of things past and a meditation on love and death." Newsday called it "intense and achingly beautiful." Andrew Solomon tells an exquisitely perceptive story of family, identity, and the changes wrought by grief and loss. Harry, an internationally celebrated concert pianist, arrives in Paris to confront his glamorous mother about his homosexuality. Instead, he discovers that she is terminally ill. In an attempt to escape his feelings of guilt and depression at the prospect of her death, he embarks on a series of intense love affairs that force him to question his sexual identity. But as time runs out and tragedy looms closer, it is the relationship between Harry and his mother that emerges in all its stark simplicity and purity. Part eulogy and part confession, A Stone Boat is