I came to this via Marilynne Robinson's 'Home' (if you like this then why not try...) and it suffers by comparison. That's not to say it isn't a good novel, just that it never approaches the linguistic perfection of Robinson's work, nor can it escape the occasional stylistic cliche to which all but the truly remarkable must resort.

An example of the cliche: the book opens with the birth of the main protagonist, Daisy Goodwill. Her mother never knew she was pregnant and dies after the labour. Gosh, haven't read that kind of thing before.

And so, somewhat clumsily, we have our isolated subject whom we are to follow for the best part of the twentieth century. And here Shields is very close to Robinson's novel. For reading on, it gradually dawns that Daisy, despite featuring in every part of the novel is, like the female protagonist in 'Home', notable largely by what she doesn't do, by her lack of character: a woman without a mother, whose first marriage is not consummated, who remarries an older man who fell in love with her when she was eleven and, so, keeps her is a state of perpetual girlhood. It goes on. Interesting stuff, particularly given the experimental form of the narrative as it shifts in voice as it moves from decade to decade.

Best parts are the most playful, the chapter made up of letters (though none from Daisy herself, another absence) and the closing chapters where others comment on her late years.

Well worth a read, but most illuminating in showing exactly how good Robinson is. ( )

Have just re-read this book, and enjoyed it, I didn't find it as engaging as I did with my initial reading. My sense of the story is that it has two components: firstly it's the telling of a woman's life (from birth to death) - Daisy was a fairly ordinary person with a fairly complete life; and secondly, the author clusters blocks of time, describing the surroundings without writing the central character in great detail and illustrates that lives can be defined in periods, which whilst connected, are discrete and a fairly significant shift from the previous period.

As an aside, though relevant given the book's title and cover, constant references were made to stone and flowers: her mother's maiden name was stone, she was born into a quarrying town, her father was a stonemason and made his money in stone, build towers of stone; her surrogate mother was a gardener, her husband a botanist, Daisy maintained a lush garden and wrote about them, she and her final friends had floral names: her father-in-law returned to the Orkneys - described as islands of superficial vegetation, growing over stone. ( )

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a woman's 'small' life, author takes risks (narration uneven but epistolary section works), speaks to me of the unfulfilled life, undoubtedly you will see the older women of your family in this story ( )

Shields did a fantastic job at capturing the life of Daisy, and although at first I wasn’t sure how much I liked the story in the beginning, I really enjoyed it in the end. The author has a very unique perspective and way to her writing, as she tells the story of Daisy’s life through multiple. Sometimes it’s through a narrator, other times, it’s an entire chapter letters, but you only see letters to Daisy, never from, and sometimes it’s through Daisy herself. And even though all the different narration techniques are a little disjointed, and they often leave big gaps, tell one side of the story, or rarely see what Daisy actually thinks (only in the first chapter), but even in chapters where we have views of multiple people in her life, and all the different narrations throughout the book, it works incredibly well, in retelling a person’s life, and how much of this is left to interpretation, and assumptions of what people think they know. One of the best techniques Shields used is found in the final chapter. I think Shields did an amazing job at portraying this “part” of Daisy’s life, her death, and after it. The chapter is written up of a combination of dialogue between characters (although we never find out who is saying what), lists, recipes and memories of her life, and again presumptions from the rest of the characters of what all the stuff might have meant to Daisy. I think this made Daisy more real for me, rather than just a character in a book.

The story did move a little slowly for me, and there wasn’t a lot of excitement that happened, but I still enjoyed it and I still had a hard time putting it down at times, because you always wanted to find out more information about Daisy, wanted to read between the lines, and wanted to know what parts of the story told from those around Daisy were actual facts, or disjointed memories and assumptions the have made through their perception of the world. Overall, it was a good story, and I look forward to reading some more of the author’s work.

Review also on my blog: http://juliebooks.blogspot.com/2009/0... ( )