A God in Every Stone
While working on a dig in Turkey with a family friend, Vivian Rose Spencer, a young Englishwoman, falls in love with both archaeology and the archaeologist, Tahsin Bey. When World War I interrupts their plans, Vivian returns home and works as a nurse, always hoping to hear something from Tahsin and to someday join him to search for circlet of Scylax in Peshawar. Eventually she goes to India on her own and meets Najeeb, a little boy sent to the train to meet his brother returning home from fighting for the British. His brother, Qayyum, a lance corporal, has come to question his loyalty to the crown and to resent the British on whose behalf so many of his friends fought and died and for whom he lost an eye. Unbeknownst to Qayyum or the rest of his family, Vivian takes Najeeb under her wing and tutors him, awakening a passion for the past that Qayyum does not understand. Eventually Vivian returns to England, Qayyum joins the movement for non-violent revolution, and Najeeb goes to university to become an archaeologist, obsessed with Vivian’s story of Scylax and the silver circlet. Years later, Vivian returns at Najeeb’s request, and the three are caught up in a whirlwind of revolutionary fervor that changes their lives forever.
Although there are flashes of brilliance, especially at the very end, A God in Every Stone was ultimately disappointing. With archaeology, romance, and revolution, I so wanted to love it, but the writing too often fell short, almost as if it was a shadow of what it was meant to be. The last section, “On the Street of Storytellers,” did much to redeem it, though, and the very last chapter, “485 BC,” is truly inspired.
