Silence of Stone by Annamarie Beckel

The Ghost Who Lived To Tell 

A review of Silence of Stone by Annamarie Beckel

Breakwater Books (2008) 208 pages

Historical fiction, a genre that recreates the story of true events, has produced some of the province’s most well-received works. Wayne Johnston’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and Michael Crummey’s River Thieves charmed enough Canadians to be deemed instant classics, and both are now taught in university literature courses. More recently, Michael Winter’s The Big Why has gotten a lot of attention. Newfoundland’s latest offering in the genre is Annamarie Beckel’s Silence of Stone. 

Silence of Stone is the story of French noblewoman Marguerite de Roberval, who was abandoned on The Isle of Demons in 1542 for supposedly disgracing her family name when she consummated her love for a worker aboard her malicious uncle’s ship. She lived to tell of her time on the island: “I was on the Isle of Demons for twenty-seven months. I know, because I kept a careful count: lines scratched on smoke-darkened walls. I hear it yet, the scrape of stone upon stone.” The title refers to this bleak, somber image of Marguerite etching a count of days onto the walls of the cave she slept in.

The story of her time on the island is revealed through a series of interviews by Andre Thevet, a man sent by the king to transcribe her story. Marguerite is reluctant to share her story, especially with Thevet, a man as scornful of her as her uncle was. Their dialogue, paired with Marguerite’s embittered internal monologue, make for some razor sharp commentary on life, love, and even God himself.  “…if God found her faith wanting, then God is a fool.” What I liked the most about their tense conversations was how they each essentially represented two different views of the world, clashing hard and loud like swords against armor. Through these interviews we learn how her servant, her lover, and their baby (born on the island),  each passed away, and eventually how she was rescued. Outside of these interviews, other plotlines include her relationship with a keen student of hers, the mystery of who killed her uncle and whether she was involved, and her uncle’s true intentions behind marooning her. 

The end product is a novel with a broad appeal. For the literary crowd, Beckel has produced a well written and stylistically distinctive novel. I was engaged immediately by the poetic, elegant opening lines “I have made a vocation of forgetting. I work at snuffing memories, one by one. Sisst, sisst. Wet fingertips to flame.”  For those just looking for a good story, she has told us a classic one, and done so in a rhythmical, engaging way.  

Also commendable here is Beckel’s impeccable character development. Even the vernacular and mannerisms are captured well. I feel like I could call ol’ Marguerite up and invite her over, I’d even know what to cook for her and which conversations to avoid. Her success here is attributable to her textbook approach to characterization: Beckel reveals her characters almost entirely through dialogue, mannerisms and attitudes, she seldom uses narrative summary. That is to say she shows us marguerite, she doesn’t just tell us about her. The same can be said of all of her characters.   

On the downside, the flow occasionally feels burdened by repetition, as if the novel could’ve been a better novella. As a result, there was the odd time I longed for a fast forward button, but then most books have their filler, so, to be fair, I’ll put a positive spin on that and say that any redundant filler serves to make the meatier moments all the more appetizing.  

In the end, it’s not just the classic, sad story of Marguerite de Roberval that makes this novel so memorable. Beckel’s innovative diction resonates in the reader’s head long after they’ve put the book down. You can read any passage from it and know that it is an excerpt from Silence of Stone, and what better testament is there that a novel is well-crafted? Throughout the book, Beckel repeats (in italics) the scornful words her uncle uttered before he abandoned her on the Island. This is not only an innovative technique, but for the deeper reader it emphasizes the harsh social climate of her times, and how we take our liberties for granted these days. It also speaks to the universal echo of our past in our present. How there are moments in our lives that we may never escape, and how we must carry on living as the ghosts of who we were. She contests that she never really survived her experience on the island, “Marguerite died, I lived”, and refers to herself in retrospect as her or she, not I or me. The metamorphosis is convincing as well: “…and my eyes, once the colour of new spring pastures, have faded to the flat blue of a placid sea.”               

This book is worth your 16.95, and as an added perk, Rhonda Molloy’s immaculate book design will make your bookcase noticeably sexier.