Sharon always had been irresistible to men. Unfaithful, willful, she flaunted indifference to them -- and they found it a challenge. At one moment tremendously responsive, at the next coldly insensitive, she manipulated her attractiveness for her own amusement and they thought her maddeningly appealing. She was exuberant, she acknowledged no obligations, refused any involvement -- and she was tantalizing, bewitching...
"You know how witches are punished in the mountain villages."
Mr. Faure, noted for his masterful style, has picked for the setting of his fifth novel the hauntingly lovely Greek islands; and Summer of Stones, distinguished for its rich, vivid descriptions, is the next best thing to a trip to Greece, with its dramatic, wind-scoured landscapes, the tiny, picturesque fishing towns, the religious processions, the energetic dances in the local cafés, the onrush of tourists sweeping over the island in a loud, garish tide.
But the colorful island idyll is shaken by Sharon's sudden arrival. With her henna hair, her bright clothes, the local Greek men find her an exciting change from their stolid women, draped in solemn black. Len, the lover she has come all the way from San Francisco to rejoin, can only look on helplessly as the pattern repeats itself, and one man after another succumbs while the women in black watch and wait. The undercurrents grow deeper, and characters, events -- modern though they are -- move with the powerful inexorability of a classic Greek tragedy until the shocking climax is reached.