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The Stone Diaries
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780140233131
ISBN: 014023313X
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: April 01, 1995
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Editorial 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.
The Stone Diaries is the story of one woman's life; a truly sensuous novel that reflects and illuminates the unsettled decades of our century.Born in 1905, Daisy Goodwill drifts through the chapters of childhood, marriage, widowhood, remarriage, motherhood and old age. Bewildered by her inability to understand her own role, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her own story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Both wonderful and boring at the same time
I finished the book, even though the story line was, at best, boring. There was nothing to grab your attention, no good beginning, climax, ending. However, this author has a way with words that kept me reading...it wasn't the story that kept my interest, it was her words. I loved the way she is able to put words together...poignant, tender, illuminating. Words are such amazing things, and she does an absolutely incredible job with putting words together.
Rating:  - I'm not sure what to think...or what I'm SUPPOSED to think...
The first thing that came to my mind upon finishing this novel was, "THIS won a Pulitzer?"
I will be kind and say that when I started the book, I was actually interested--for about the first third of it--although I wondered how it was supposed to be a book about Daisy Stone Goodwill when it hardly said anything about HER. But then it started delving into her life, and that's when it began to get boring! Daisy did absolutely NOTHING interesting. About the most interesting thing that happened ... Read More
Rating:  - Classic Canadian Literature!
Carol Shields was awarded both the O.C. (Officer of the Order of Canada) and the C.C. (Companion of the Order of Canada) before her death. Despite being born an American citizen, she lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba and Victoria, British Columbia in the Dominion known as Canada. I love Canada and this book is a wonderful legacy of a great writer and author who brought alive characters like Daisy, Cuyler, Mercy, Mrs. Flett, Barker, and others without so much flash. They are quite ordinary characters in an ordinary ... Read More
Rating: - Fun Historical Fiction
This book is in fact written very much as a journal or diary, which would naturally include the real, human gaps of time for recordings in its volume. Even though it's mostly comprehensive in the lifeline of Daisy (Stone) Goodwill Flett, the coverage of her children's lives (her own offspring, grandchildren as well as those of her cousins), her friends' lives, her parents' lives fill the pages, only some of their information was integral to progress the story. I didn't feel compelled to want to know how anyone ... Read More
Rating: - Unique worthiness - like a heirloom passed down
I picked up this well worn book at a used book sale somewhere, liking the summary on the back and curious about the Pulitzer Prize winning. I just finished the last page and walked away with a deep sense of loss and a tad bit of depression. Here is a story (beautifully presented) of a woman who never exactly felt she had found her place in the world although at different periods of her life she came close. She became what would be viewed by many standards as a successful mother, a moderately successful wife ... Read More
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