The Stone Collector

Some things are not meant to be stolen. Hexus Thorne, vicious hitman for the Mafia, realizes this when he unsuspectingly takes possession of a powerful orb with legendary powers. And yet- this is not the only Stone hiding among the ancient ruins of Meylach...

Eitan Olevsky's The Stone Collector is like a cross between Neil Gaiman, Umberto Eco, Jorge Luis Borges, and Paulo Coelho.  Part murder mystery, part mythic fantasy, part conspiracy theory, part social satire, this truly eccentric novel is built around the notion of seven stones that are as much curses as blessings, with a cast of characters that include a devout rabbi, a sexy newscaster, a socially awkward college student, a professional hit man, a drug lord, and an archaeological assistant.  The powers they gain (to kill, to heal, to travel through mirrors, to transmute matter, to speak to spirits, and to make things grow) all come with a cost, as if the stones themselves were linked to the aspect of the psyche that each of the dramatis personae most need to confront and transform. Indeed, that's the charm of this perceptive little book.  

In telling an apparently fantastical tale about eastern and western alchemy, Atlantis, and the Mythraic Mysteries, it probes relentlessly at our human foibles - our insecurities, our vanities, our regrets, our desires.  The text, riddled with esoteric clues in the form of names, folk legends and mythological references, and of symbols drawn from the animal world and the elements, brings together the eschatological and psychological archetypes of world culture.  The intricately planned chapters can be read, and reread, at many levels, as the plot thickens, the pace quickens, and the interwoven strands begin to feel like double helices.  
For this reader, the stones themselves were mesmerizing, ushering the imagination through a process of inner alchemy, as the groups of chapters activated issues in ways that superimposed the seven chakra wheels of the tantric/yogic system on the Vitruvian Man of the Renaissance...all this, yet always with a wink at the familiar ego formations that make life such an absurd mess, proving that if there's a young master in this story, it just might be Olevsky himself.
-William Rubel

As I finish Chapter 7 of Eitan Olevsky's 'The Stone Collector' a cold wave passes through my body, the hair stands up on my forearms, I shudder.
My first thought is, 'what the hell just happened?' I stare at the page a long time recalling the first time I had this sensation.
 
As a little boy I learned to swim in a small lake near my village deep in the forest country of Ontario. Before I could even dog paddle, Father would get me to hang on to the flat transom of our tiny rowboat and kick my legs as he rowed slowly away from shore. I remember the sun blinding my eyes, and from somewhere within that glare the voice of my father shouting, 'kick, kick, keep your legs stiff, feet extended , up and down.' and finally, 'that's it, keep going, we'll make a swimmer of you  yet."
 
As long as I looked at my father's face, and did what he told  me I was able to control my fear.
It was the first time I'd been in the water over my head, but it wasn't the fear of drowning that spooked me.
 
From the shore, the lake had always appeared blue reflecting the sky. But out here, up to my thin shoulders, far from shore, the water beneath me was night black, foreboding, a swim with dark moving things. The bottom half of my small body was swallowed by the blackness. So, though the summer day was very warm, and the lake water tepid, one look down into those inky depths and I felt, even under water,  the hair stand up on my arms and legs, tiny hairs that, as a child, I didn't even know I had. My body shivered uncontrollably.
 
Later, that evening, I told my mother what had happened to me. She was stirring a pot on the stove, and without turning from her cooking, she said, "Oh don't worry, someone just walked over your grave."
 
Throughout The Stone Collector the main characters reveal themselves to be ordinary people, each possessed of a soul challenged to face the world ultimately alone, each the hero of his own adventure. I know these 'people'. Like all of us, they are fallible, merely human, yet, by this very common  measure, compelling to follow. As readers we all know that the stereotypical "Hero" can always be counted on to rise to any challenge like a champion. But one is never quite certain how the average person, weak, limited, often cast as the anti-hero, will prevail or not prevail under duress. This is what makes these characters interesting and ultimately believable.
 
Olevsky has a keen visceral talent for breathing bright human spirit into his characters who in turn pump a strong living pulse through the narrative. And thus, their hopes, insecurities, disappointments and foibles lend rich colour to each moment.
 
I had read only a few lines of The Stone Collector when I found myself feeling swept along by what seemed a playful current moving upon the surface of the story. Before long though, I began to sense some subtext of which I had been barely conscious, a subtle undertow pulling me toward deeper water. Still, there was a frolicking quality to the narrative that drew from me an unconscious agreement to be entertained, and to disregard a darker unseen edge. And so, as reader, my willing compliance to be led into the shadows of the tale was gladly given and as though hypnotized I allowed  myself to become fully immersed in the story.  Before realizing I was over my head and something down deep seemed to stir. Perhaps just a vague shape beneath the surface as the bottom dropped away. I couldn't really see it, but I could feel it down there, my imaginations' Leviathan.
 
Even now I cannot name it.
 
I have only an unformed but unmistakable sense that what Eitan Olevsky has fashioned within The Stone Collector is chthonic, a true dark vision beneath a cowl of mystery.

-Philip Osborne