THE GIFT OF STONES <i> by Jim Crace (Collier: $7.95) </i>

In this beautifully polished short novel, Jim Crace re-creates the last days of a Neolithic village, whose inhabitants earn their livelihoods by chipping flints into blades for tools and weapons. The misfit in their rigidly circumscribed world is the narrator’s stepfather, barred from a life of working the brittle stone by the amputation of his right hand. He learns to fashion words instead, shaping tales with the care and skill that his relatives reserve for their most delicately edged blades. The struggle of the one-armed storyteller for existence becomes a rumination on the need for art in an otherwise mundane existence. Crace’s evocation of the dark, fearful Neolithic world is far removed from the Jung-at-heart hokum of “The Clan of the Cave Bear”; “The Gift of Stones” is a deceptively simple book that explores profound ideas with a rare delicacy of touch.