A very disturbing story of the descent into madness of a woman who has spent her life caring for her schizophrenic father and sees the development of the same illness in her four-year old son. When he drowns she is convinced her husband killed him. The tale is told by her brother, in part as a statement to the police and in part as narrative. Deeply gripping, sometimes frightening, it certainly deserves reading. Try his Breakheart Hill too, it’s excellent.
The Murmur of Stones is the gripping story of a woman who begins to suspect that her husband drowned their schizophrenic son. Brilliant and intense, Diana grew up caring for her schizophrenic father, and when her own son, Jason, is diagnosed as suffering from the same affliction, she devotes herself to the quietly heroic responsibility of caring for a child who will never be ordinary – a fact that Mark, her husband, finds hard to accept.
Perhaps this is why, when tragedy strikes, Diana can’t believe the coroner’s conclusion that her son’s death was accidental. As she throws herself into building a case against her husband, she turns to her brother, David, and his family for support. As the seductive qualities of Diana’s manic energy become impossible to ignore, David has reason to begin to fear for his own daughter’s safety and sanity.
