ISBN: 9780241143988

Synopsis This new world weighs a yatto-gram…On the airwaves, all the talk is of the new blue planet – pristine and habitable, like our own 65 million years ago, before we took it to the edge of destruction. And off the air, Billie and Spike are falling in love. What will happen when their story combines with the world’s story, as they whirl towards Planet Blue, into the future? Will they – and we – ever find a safe landing place? An interplanetary love story – of Billie and Spike, of the past and the future; a traveller’s tale; a hymn to the beauty of the world. “The Stone Gods” is Jeanette Winterson at her brilliant best. Playful, passionate, polemical, and frequently very funny, this is a novel which will change forever the stories we tell about the earth, about love and about stories themselves.

Bookclub Review The book is made up of 3 short stories, all with a common thread. The first short story is set in the future, and talks about a new “blue planet”, as society has destroyed the old planet. The 2nd story begins March 1777 and the protagonist, Billy, is a sailor on Captain Cook’s voyage to Easter Island. Shipwrecked and abandoned by his fellow seamen, he falls in love with an islander. The island is dying as the islanders have cut down all the trees. In the 3rd story the protagonist Billie has been adopted as a baby. Her birth heralds the start of a journey of separation from her mother.

What the group thought:

A nice discussion lasting about 1 1/2hours. Lots of opinions and debate but most of us were in agreement that the story was well researched and believable. The main thread of the story is destruction and our lack of ability to learn from past mistakes. As one of our members pointed out that this was a well researched scientific story. The three stories complemented each other well. However the main character Billie was a humorless hero, this is a character that none of us will probably remember. The content was identified as being somewhat “dated” – however, the group rated the book pretty well…
Books that came to mind when reading this book were; “Oryx and Crake” by Atwood, “Cloud Atlas” by Mitchell, and “Galapagos” by Vonnegut.
If you like to read books that question society and have a science fiction edge, then this might be a good read for you.