A Stone Boat: A Novel

The debut novel, first published nearly twenty years ago, from the National Book Award-winning author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression and Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity—a luminous and moving evocation of the love between a son and his mother.

A finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction prize, A Stone Boat is an achingly beautiful, deeply perceptive story of family, sexuality, and the startling changes wrought by grief, loss, and self-discovery.

Harry, an internationally celebrated young concert pianist, travels to Paris to confront his glamorous and formidable mother about her dismay at his homosexuality. Before he can give voice to his hurt and anger, he discovers that she is terminally ill. In an attempt to escape his feelings of guilt and despair over the prospect of her death, he embarks on several intense affairs—one with a longtime female friend—that force him to question his capacity for love, and finally to rediscover it.

Part eulogy, part confession, and part soliloquy on forgiveness, A Stone Boat is a luminous evocation of the destructive and regenerative, all-encompassing love between a son and his mother, by America’s foremost chronicler of personal and familial resilience.