The Stone Diaries [Hardcover]

Carol Shields (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 16, 1994

From her birth in rural Manitoba, to her journey with her father to southern Indiana, to her years as a wife, mother, and widow, to her old age, Daisy Stone Goodwill struggles to find a place for herself in her own life. 15,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This fictionalized autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett, captured in Daisy's vivacious yet reflective voice, has been winning over readers since its publication in 1995, when it won the Pulitzer Prize. After a youth marked by sudden death and loss, Daisy escapes into conventionality as a middle-class wife and mother. Years later she becomes a successful garden columnist and experiences the kind of awakening that thousands of her contemporaries in mid-century yearned for but missed in alcoholism, marital infidelity and bridge clubs. The events of Daisy's life, however, are less compelling than her rich, vividly described inner life--from her memories of her adoptive mother to her awareness of impending death. Shields' sensuous prose and her deft characterizations make this, her sixth novel, her most successful yet.

From Publishers Weekly

Canadian writer Shields's novels and short stories ( Swann ; The Republic of Love , etc.) are intensely imagined, humanely generous, beautifully sustained and impeccably detailed. Despite rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, she has yet to achieve an audience here; one hopes this latest effort, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, will be her breakthrough. It is at once a playful sendup of the art of biography and a serious exploration of the essential mystery of human lives; the gist of this many-faceted story is that all biographies are only versions of the facts. Shields follows her heroine, Daisy Goodwill Hoad Flett, from her birth--and her mother's death--on the kitchen floor of a stonemason's cottage in a small quarry town in Manitoba through childhood in Winnipeg, adolescence and young womanhood in Bloomington, Ind. (another quarry town), two marriages, motherhood, widowhood, a brief, exhilarating career in Ottawa--and eventually to old age and death in Florida. Stone is the unifying image here: it affects the geography of Daisy's life, and ultimately her vision of herself. Wittily, ironically, touchingly, Shields gives us Daisy's version of her life and contrasting interpretations of events from her friends, children and extended family. (She even provides ostensible photographs of Daisy's family and friends.) Shields's prose is succint, clear and graceful, and she is wizardly with description, summarizing appearance, disposition and inner lives with elegant imagery. Secondary characters are equally compelling, especially Daisy's obese, phlegmatic mother; her meek, obsessive father, who transforms himself into an overbearing executive; her adoptive mother, her stubborn father-in-law. Readers who discover Shields with this book can also pick up a simultaneously published paperback version of an early first novel, Happenstance . Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition edition (March 16, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670853097
• ISBN-13: 978-0670853090
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (188 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #429,629 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Defining a life lived..., December 15, 1999

By 

Marie Rochon - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Stone Diaries (Mass Market Paperback)

How can one define a life lived? If we had a chance to have our life story written, and then told through the eyes of those who were closest to us, what would they say about us, and more interestingly, how accurate would they be in truly understanding the inner nuances that make each of us tick?

In "The Stone Diaries," Carol Shields attempts to chronicle the life of Daisy Goodwill. It is a life first told through the eyes of Daisy, and then through the eyes of those who presumably knew her best: her friends, children and relatives.

What is extraordinary about this book, is that one can look at a life lived in so many ways. Was Daisy Goodwill's life uneventful, lacking the excitement and freedom of her more worldly friends? Or was it a full, rich life? Only the reader can make this determination. But what is fascinating about "The Stone Diaries" is how the determination of the value of Daisy's life is so different, depending on the perspective that is taken. How much do we really know those people who we love the most? How well do we really know each other? I found this book to be a fascinating read, particularly for women who are living their life in full; however unfascinating and uneventful that may seem.

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Fictional" biography in an amalgam of styles, December 13, 1998

By 

Rick Hunter (Malone, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Stone Diaries (Mass Market Paperback)

Carol Shields The Stone Diaries [Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award 1995] is the story of Daisy Stone Goodwill, a Canadian woman whose mother died in childbirth, was raised by her neighbor's relatives, was widowed twice (the first time on her honeymoon), raised children, worked in a job she loved until she was fired, moved to Florida, and died. Daisy is, in one sense, an absolutely "ordinary" woman, who lives much of her life in the shadow of men. I think that it was for this reason, and the fact that she ends her life separated from her children, that my wife (and other women I know who have read this book) found the novel very depressing. I was not so struck. What came across to me was Daisy's resilience in the face of very difficult circumstances, finding some satisfaction on the world's terms. Undeniably, Daisy was not a "success" as we now view women's lives. However, she formed some successful relationships, and always seemed to put the pieces together to move from one part of her life to the next. The best example of this for me was her Florida bridge group, "The Flowers" (Daisy, Lilly, Myrtle and Glad), who became her final community after she was long widowed, and her childhood friends dead. One can regret that life has brought her to this final community, a circle of old widows in a retirement home, or note how Daisy stays on her feet and moving, from one chapter of life to the end.

One cannot read The Stone Diaries without being struck by the style -- or rather styles -- in which it is written. While clearly fiction, Shields gives the appearance of journalism by including photographs purporting to be of the various characters. The photographs give one pause -- am I reading a novel trying to be non-fiction, or a fictionalized "real life" biography? Shields also changes style, form, and voice as she goes from chapter to chapter. For example, the chapter captioned "work" takes the form of a series of letters by and about Daisy's work as a newspaper writer. There is no "narrator" or chronicler; the story is told by one letter following the next. The chapter "Sorrow" takes the form of first-person opinions, by various persons in Daisy's life, as to why she is depressed. Again, Shields has no omniscient narrator. Other chapters are told by the more conventional, omniscient third-person narrator.

I found this a wonderful book, and recommend it highly. My wife, Carol, disagrees: "I wouldn't say that this is a "bad" book and not worth reading. It just seems to capture in a very stark way the extreme ordinariness of the lives of so many women. Admittedly, not all women are destined to great things, but somehow, even the most mundane of us--provided we have a jot of self awareness--hope (and pray) that our lives have some deeper meaning and that somehow our being alive has made a positive difference. Upon reflection, may be that's what this book is about. But I can't say that I finished it with the impression that the life of Daisy Stone was really that important in the grand scheme of things. For a reader whose life isn't really any more exciting than Daisy's--that was a frightening and frankly unpleasant conclusion."

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quiet Poetry, July 25, 2003

By 

James Hiller (Beaverton, OR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Stone Diaries (Mass Market Paperback)

It's sad when it takes the death of an author to bring her work to my attention. Carol Shields recent passing, and the accolades by some of my favorite authors about her writing inspired me to select one book of hers to read. Fortunately, I picked the Stone Diaries, and simply could not put it down until the last memorable word.

Shields picks the most unlikely person to feature in a fictional book, Daisy Stone, whose life is mundane if not predictable. After an incredible birth and beginning, we travel with her through different years of her life, somewhat seemingly picked randomly. As we read each chapter, and witness the unveiling of her life, we begin to appreciate and realize that Daisy's life isn't extraordinary, but plain and common.

What is extraordinary is that Shields chooses to give a character like Daisy this incredible voice. Underrepresented in literature, women like these exist, they exist yesterday and will exist tomorrow. Sure, they have moments of brightness in their lives, in which we see in Daisy, but it never goes over the top.

What amazed me about this book was Shields extremely fluid writing style allows you to flow through this story as if it were unfolding before your very eyes. She allows different characters to pick up the story line, and share their viewpoints. Sometimes we hear Daisy, sometimes we hear a third person narrator. Sometimes we aren't even privy to who is speaking. Shields takes amazing leaps in her writing, trusting her reader to make those connections.

I'm saddened by the loss of Carol Shields, but gladdened to know that she's left gifts of literature to discover. In the meantime, if you want a broad, amazing story, pick up Stone Diaries.