The Stone Diaries

This book! It’s just the story of a life, of several lives, of loneliness and internal desolation, of a life half lived or unlived, of too late awakenings, of “orphanhood” and the horrible effects of feeling unloved….of loss …and unresolved grief that lasted a life time. And yet, it’s so much more.

We are taken on several characters’ journeys in a biographical/autobiographical structure that normally would have confused me (all the switches from omniscient narrator to third person back to first, etc.), but seemed to have worked for this book. It begins and ends with the same character, Daisy.

Shields’ writing is good, but there were some metaphors left me utterly confused (forgot to write them down).
Another bothersome bit show more was the picture used for the fictional character, Mercy (the author incorporates family pictures in the middle like you may find in biographies/autobiographies, which thrilled me). So much (so much!) emphasis was made as to how obese Mercy was, how elephantine and enormous she was (the author’s descriptions not my own assumptions), and the picture used was of an average portly woman and nothing like the Mercy that was described.

But these two small gripes are nothing compared to the aspects I absolutely loved about this book:
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The main thing I got out of this book is that time passes and time is precious. We should make the best of this thing called life for as long as we can, and according to our own interpretation of what it means to be alive and present: ““It has never been easy for me to understand the obliteration of time, to accept, as others seem to do, the swelling and corresponding shrinkage of seasons or the conscious acceptance that one year has ended and another begun. There is something here that speaks of our essential helplessness and how the greater substance of our lives is bound up with waste and opacity. Even the sentence “twelve years have passed” is to deny the fact of biographical logic. How can so much time hold so little, how can it be taken from us? Months, weeks, days, hours misplaced – and the most precious time of life, too, when our bodies are at their greatest strength, and open, as they never will be again, to the onslaught of sensation.” Time *is* precious…say what you need to before it’s too late.
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This is such a simple story and yet so profound. The notion that we can, and often are, different people at different times of our lives is not usually acknowledged or accepted. This is exemplified in various characters but most notably with Cuyler Goodwill: quiet acquiescing child, besotted young husband who had an erotic awakening, despondent widower who leaned into faith, negligent father who reassumed his role with guilt and determination, self-made man who became extremely eloquent, and a man who later lost his flavor for words and started a new life with a new wife. So many different people in one life time!
As to the ending – it will haunt me for a minute. Initially it felt so drawn out and long. I was thinking “Where the heck is this leading? It’s the end of a life. I get it” – But then realized that, not only did the author do an amazing job of “ending” a life phase, but she set it up as a contrast between what “we” (the general societal “we”) see as opposed to what “we” (the personal) may be thinking or experiencing at the end of our lives:

“Daisy Goodwill Flett….died peacefully…after a long illness patiently borne…” VS “I am not at peace.” (final unspoken words by Daisy) – AHHHHHH!!!! I’m still shuddering. show less

Meet Daisy Goodwill, the daughter of a woman who (arguably) died without knowing she was a mother. Daisy may as well have been carved from stone. She is, after all, the daughter of a stonecutter, and eventually she is the wife of two men (not at the same time) and mother of three children. After her singular birth, Daisy leads an outwardly unremarkable life.

I read the book years ago, but the only passage of this Pulitzer Prize winning novel I recognize upon re-reading is the statement that Canada is very hot in summer. I was taken aback when I found a series of photos halfway through the book, all with captions identifying them as Daisy’s family members. I don’t remember seeing them the first time around. Wait, I thought – is this show more a true story?

It’s not, and the photo pretense is one of the boldest literary devices I’ve seen in fiction. Consider that the narrator is Daisy herself and that she speaks in both first and third person, and consider that third-person Daisy narrates her own death (no spoilers there; you’ll know that as soon as you look at the chapter titles), and you will recognize that this is not your ordinary life story.

Most of the book takes place in Canada, starting around 1905. The “stone” motif is strong through about the first third of the book, is submerged in the story of Daisy’s work and home life, and then shows up again toward the end – a subtle, but pleasant surprise. Daisy has origins in stone, and in the end she returns to stone.

I’m glad I picked this book up to re-read. I’m still struggling to make sense of how first-person Daisy can impose herself into a third-person narrative – even using the two different voices in the same sentence at one point toward the end of the story. I’ll be thinking about this for a while.

This short novel is character-driven, which leads to some introspective passages that are a little tedious, so I rated my experience of The Stone Diaries at 4.5 stars. If you enjoyed reading or watching Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, or Helen Hooven Santmyer’s novel And Ladies of the Club, you will appreciate this book. show less

The Publisher Says: The Stone Diaries is one ordinary woman's story of her journey through life. Born in 1905, Daisy Stone Goodwill drifts through the roles of child, wife, widow, and mother, and finally into her old age. Bewildered by her inability to understand her place in her own life, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography. Her life is vivid with incident, and yet she feels a sense of powerlessness. She listens, she observes, and through sheer force of imagination she becomes a witness of her own life: her birth, her death, and the troubling missed connections she discovers between. Daisy's struggle to find a place for herself in her own life is a paradigm show more of the unsettled decades of our era.

A witty and compassionate anatomist of the human heart, Carol Shields has made distinctively her own that place where the domestic collides with the elemental. With irony and humor she weaves the strands of The Stone Diaries together in this, her richest and most poignant novel to date.

My Review: Read thirty (!) years ago, still fresh in my heart if not my mind. This quote from my commonplace book sums up the appeal, and the limitations, of the work for me:

It has never been easy for me to understand the obliteration of time, to accept, as others seem to do, the swelling and corresponding shrinkage of seasons or the conscious acceptance that one year has ended and another begun. There is something here that speaks of our essential helplessness and how the greater substance of our lives is bound up with waste and opacity... How can so much time hold so little, how can it be taken from us? Months, weeks, days, hours misplaced—and the most precious time of life, too, when our bodies are at their greatest strength, and open, as they never will be again, to the onslaught of sensation.

"Limitation" as used in reference to this book is simply recognition that it's very much a read for older folk and/or those whose lives have been marked by grief and loss on scales beyond the ordinary. Inside those limits, Daisy is a good companion and a deft storyteller with permaybehaps a bit less than universal appeal. Her acceptance of things can feel passive, as though she's willingly playing the victim in her own narrative. Ultimately, after three more decades of my own lfe have elapsed, I now see this as her strength, her water-like incompressibility, expressing itself.

A very good read indeed. Recommended most particularly to men who are married to women. show less

This is a fictional autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett, the daughter of an orphan Mercy Stone. Everyone who comes to live at Stonewall Home is given the last name of Stone. Daisy’s mother dies at birth, Daisy is raised essentially by a foster mother until her foster mother dies when she is 11. She then lives with her father in Indiana. Daisy gets a college education, marries, becomes a widow. Her father remarries, she is getting too old to stay in the home with her father and his new wife so she goes back to Canada to visit the son of her foster mother. Daisy is ordinary. This is the story of her life and her losses.

I loved this book. I was immediately engaged. What I liked is that I thought the story was very accurate in its show more historical representation of the evolution of a woman’s life. Daisy’s mother grew up in an orphanage. She knew nothing of relationships between people let alone between a man and a woman. She didn’t know a think about sex or pregnancy. Daisy grew up in foster home and never knew the bond of daughter mother. She went to college, unusual in her day, she was smart but she never thought of doing anything but being a Good Housekeeping wife and mother. The decades were represented through Daisy but we the reader shares the changes these decades made for women through the lives of Mercy, Daisy, Alice and Victoria (niece). Victoria would be the woman most aligned with my own time capsule. I like books that deal with aging and the aged including dying. This books ending chapter are choppy but I think the author was intentional. Thoughts for the elderly probably drift and end abruptly and never settle or stick. show less

On the surface, this is the story of the life of a typical woman who lived from 1905- 199*. Daisy Goodwill Flett doesn't do much that is remarkable. She is orphaned at a young age but adopted by a neighbor. Marries twice, is a housewife and mother, finds a job after her husband's death as a gardening columnist, suffers from depression when she loses her job, finds her way back into a comfortable old age, and dies.

At first as a reader, I sort of wondered, what is the point? But there is a lot to ponder here. Lots about how society views women, how women's lives changed over the century, and what sort of voice a woman has. The book is titled The Stone Diaries which led me to believe this would be a first person account of a woman's life show more with lots of personal reflection. But actually, almost everyone gets to comment on Daisy except for Daisy herself. Her friends, children, neighbors all voice observations about Daisy and her life, but only at a few points is Daisy herself allowed a voice about her own life.

Another matter for pondering is the genre of historical fiction itself. This book is set up to make you believe that it is a fictionalized account of real people. There are pictures included of the family, letters that could easily be real, a family tree, etc. So I wondered if Shields was commenting on the genre. She made me think about what is important in historical fiction? How much needs to be true vs. the importance of depicting life in an era whether it's "true" or not. Is Daisy's fictional life any less true than an account of a "real" woman who lived over this era would be?

What I loved about this book is that it can be read on many different levels, one of the marks of a great book for me. show less

I found The Stone Diaries to be both highly interesting and thoroughly readable. This is a biography of a fictional woman, from her moment of birth in 1905 through to her death in the 1990s. Daisy Goodwill Hoad Flett lived a seemingly simple life yet this novel captures not only her and her family but also paints a vivid picture of life in 20th century North America. The author also includes a detailed family tree and a selection of black and white photographs that brings the whole book to the edge of reality.

The book is divided into chapters, each one entitled after an event or episode of Daisy’s life, hence we have “Birth, 1905”, “Marriage, 1927”, “Motherhood, 1947”, and as her life plays out over the pages, we absorb show more both her story and that of her family. Included are obituaries, recipes and shopping lists all of which open her life for the reader to explore.

The Stone Diaries is an inventive and original look at a person’s life and although Daisy was always surrounded by family and friends, it is obvious that her journey, as indeed all of our journeys, is internally a solitary one. And while the author acknowledges loneliness, she also allows for grace, candour, and dignity. show less

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields is often described as the story of an ordinary woman, but I see Daisy Goodrich's story as far from ordinary. Daisy and the women that came before and after her were the backbone of the story. Strong, brave, decision-making women that took control when control was needed. Shields paints her characters with the finest strokes. Beautiful, descriptive prose that fleshes out her characters so fully that each could be the main character of their own novel... and of those characters, it is the women of this story that have the strength of stone.