Customer Reviews
Atmospheric - By: , 18 Mar 2004 
Fiction written around current affairs is always problematic. Either it's so realistic that it ceases to be fiction; or it becomes too fantastical. Damascus Gate verges into the fantastical with its array of colourful characters from all walks of Israeli life, & their various dastardly plots.
Fortunately, Stone keeps the fantasy groundedin a wonderfully atmospheric Jerusalem, coupled with the extraordinary (but very real) "Jerusalem Syndrome" of religious fanatics.
My only complaint is that Stone occasionally gets so wrapped upin his characters that the plot goes slack, & perhaps the book could have been trimmed a bitin the editing.
flawed classic - By: , 05 Dec 2001 
'Damascus Gate' is a flawed work- maybe it tries too hard & tackles an array of themes that don't always jell...Criticising this book for its Graham Greene-qualities seems petty: as with 'The Quiet American' we get a love-storyin a warzone/culture-religion clash. We see the humans within the political theorum...This book is well written & is obligatory reading considering the current (perpetual?) state of eventsin Jerusalem/the Middle East. Of course there are political tomes that are more pertinent to this situation- but this book uses the 'actual' as a backdrop to a fictional story. I think, thatin the passage of time, this novel will gain classic status. Let's also face facts: every novel has flaws- it is dependent on opionion and/or critical angle. This book warrants its five stars as it tries for the heavens- as 'Moby Dick' did (amongst others). When was a display of ambition & emotion this rich ever a bad thing?
Never Comes Alive - By: A. Ross, 27 Nov 2001 
Let it be stated up front that this is a long, long book-one that ultimately does not reward the reader who makes it all the way to the end. Stone has attempted to craft work of ideas about faith & identity on the framework of a pseudo-millennial thriller (the book is setin 1992 or thereabouts), & the result failsin all areas. Firstly, there are a plethora of characters, very few of whom are developed into anything interesting, but almost all of whom have some odd background. Russian jazz club owners, Irish revolutionaries, rich Louisiana mystics, they're all here, along with the cliche cynical Western journalist to record it all. It's as if Stone wanted to create some sort of Graham Greenesque place where the flotsam & jetsam of the post-Cold War world have settled. One gets absolutely no sense that there are any ordinary people livingin Israel or the Occupied Territories.
Few peoplein this book speak like normal people, & everyone seems to be involvedin some secretive group, cabal, or plot. That said, the thriller aspect of the book is a total disappointment, by the end it's hard to really care what happens. Indeed the best moments of tension come 200 pages earlierin a refugee camp on the Gaza Strip. Stone spends much more time on faith than he does actually creating any kind of interesting story, & that's where the book was a real bore for me. Much of the plot revolves around the semi-organized groups of religious weirdoes who are drawn to Jerusalem for obvious reasons. As an agnositc, it was very take any of the book's endless universalist, cabalistic, speechifing seriously. So many of the characters seem to be exceedingly childishly grasping & unthinkingin their quest for spiritual enlightenment, that one is hard-pressed to care about them at all. And the central character's wrestling with his half-Jewishness is pretty stale stuff. His love affair with a jazz singer is telegraphed from miles away, proceeds enigmatically, & ends predictably. Why even bother? Indeed, much of the book seems to wander about to no purpose. Stone does provide detailed visual descriptions of people & places, but they never come alive, much like the book itself.
