When a friend I was working with in the children’s section of a bookshop pulled a book off the shelf and said “This is one of my favourites”, little did I know that it would become one of mine too. Which is strange, because it’s a quirky little book that I can’t imagine would appeal to everyone.
The Stone Baby begins with a simple statement that many could relate to: “I’m looking for something.” There seems to be something alluding us quite often, whether it be physical/practical, or metaphysical/spiritual, but sometime our lives can become overwhelmed with stuff and we could use a helping hand.
When the main character of this story is pushed from her bedroom by an avalanche of toys, she finds herself falling into a hole that seems to be growing in her back yard. This moment is reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, but here, the girl finds a stone baby and holds tight to it.
As the fantastical journey unfolds in some rather unexpected ways, the girl continues to carry the Stone Baby, doing her best to look after it, despite it not actually belonging to you. The whole thing is delightfully symbolic with more than a few Australian references thrown in, as if Tim Burton had grown up here. At one point the girl finds the baby too heavy and has to leave it behind, only to return because of its crying. Then a wind picks up and the girl loses control and thinks she has broken the baby, but she discovers it has transformed into a flock of bluebirds who then carry her home in return for her carrying the baby such a long way.
As she enters her bedroom, she finds it neat and orderly (well as neat as you would expect of a child) and exclaims to her dog that she has found what she was looking for.
As you can see from even that brief run-down, there is a lot going on in this book. For me, even more so. I read that the term ‘stone baby’ is used for a condition where there can be a still-born foetus that remains in the womb for what can be up to 30 years. All other natural cycles go on, the baby remains. When I read that, I immediately thought of this book. I once met Beth Norling and asked her about it but she hadn’t heard the term used like this before. She agreed, though, that it offered a whole other way to interpret the book. Please don’t let my review here weird you out. As I said, this is only one way of looking at this book. Sometimes I read it and I don’t see that, I see many other things. I still haven’t come to a conclusion about what this book means to me, but with each re-read, I enjoy the mystery.
After all, aren’t we all looking for something?
No comments:
Post a Comment