Stone Junction

It’s time to talk about the best book ever written.

Wow, what a loaded statement. Wars have probably been started over less. Okay, lets bring it down to earth.

It’s time to talk about my favourite book.

STONE JUNCTION by Jim Dodge. It’s a book that goes everywhere with me. When people ask me my favourite book, I don’t even have to hesitate. I probably couldn’t draw up a top ten list; ranking books like that is near impossible. But I do know which book would be at the top.



What’s it about? It’s impossible to describe really.

I’ve tried many times to tell people about it, but I always see their eyes glaze over at the halfway point. It’s impossible to categorise. In my days working in a bookshop, I found that this would sell exactly the same whether you put it in the fiction section, the crime section or the fantasy section.

The main narrative centres on Daniel. He starts the book as a child, travelling America with his young mother. She’s the rebellious sort, cast out for punching a nun, and turns to grifting to get money for her young family.
They get picked up by a truck driver who reveals himself to be part of a secret society, a union of outlaws if you will, and from there the book takes flight on just about the strangest, most eclectic and most affirming journey set to paper.
It’s got sex, it’s got crime, it’s got terrorists, it’s got a jewell heist, it’s got gambling and driving, romance and explosives. It’s got alchemy and genuine magic. It’s the most fantastic book ever set in the real world, as if Kerouac dropped a blotter halfway through ON THE ROAD.

It’s not without problems. The journey has been so magical, and so uncontrollable, that the book loses a bit of steam in the final pages. But there was honestly no ending that would have done toe story justice. The prose is crazy and free, taught and Hammett-like one minute, flowery and flowing the next. It works though, which is a feat in itself.

One of the quotes on the back of my current edition, the well-put together cannongate one, says “A book I put my life on hold for. ” and that sums it up well. It’s been the book I turn to in crisis, along with THE PRINCESS BRIDE. The best quote though probably belongs to the BIG ISSUE; “the kind of book that inspires you to smear yourself in pigs blood and stand butt-naked on the church roof howling abuse at the congregation.” Oh yes.