(Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) - The Stone Diaries

WARNING: SPOILERS

An excellent read for character development. Shields exhibits great talent in developing characters, including how they can dramatically -- with or seemingly without basis -- evolve over time. I absolutely adored Daisy's mother (first chapter) and was (empathetically) disappointed that Daisy would never know her as well as the dear reader would.

The storyline itself started exciting and full of potential, but -- probably like most ordinary lives -- fizzled out midway and especially after the "Mrs. Greenthumb" chapter, perhaps illustrating how the default of "ordinariness" happens to so many due to one's circumstances, era, and choices. Despite Daisy's education (good for a woman of that era) and chance to start over in her 20s/30s with freedom and some money, she makes non-passionate and safe choices that commit her to an uneventful life.

Shields' story overwhelmingly summarizes "normalness" and "ordinariness" in 20th century America. I particularly enjoyed the kinds of everyday observations that are trivial yet make up memories in our lives (e.g., that crack in the bedroom ceiling that has just always been there and we see every morning and night -- until we one day get up and do something about it; whatever happens to the ring placed in the "time capsule" and why does no one in the family make the move to take care of passing along important family keepsakes?; the cheap decor and construction of cheezy Florida retirement homes). Funny how these ordinary things make up the bulk of our lives, moreso than the big accomplishments.

That said, the book has enough twists (the manner/timing of death of Daisy's first husband) and coincidences (the discovery of the ancient Magnus Flett in the nursing home; the dignity and role of the outcast "old Jew" who saved newborn Daisy and mysteriously placed the coin on her forehead) to keep one surprised and entertained. Until the dreary demise, that is. A tale of warning to young women everywhere not to waste their opportunities!

On a final note: I did not care for the "fake photos" that made up the family tree. Some things are better left up to the reader's vivid imagination.

The Stone Diaries is a well written novel which explores the many events that take place in the lives of women and the effect it has on others around them. Daisy Goodwill Flett is a mother, a daughter, a wife, a lover, a cultivator, a woman, a Flower. This novel, which has a habit of avoiding deep descriptions of this and other characters, gives insight into what it means to be a woman; the ups and downs and the joys and depressions of it. With its vast range of diverse women, the novel will severely TRY to keep you entertained. This may be because of the fact that no two women in the novel are the same. The characters vary from Daisy's mother, Mercy Stone Goodwill, a quiet, shy woman who is raised in an orphanage, with the high point of her life being a housewife, to Clarentine Flett (Mercy's neighbour ), a friendly woman with the courage to leave her husband in a time where such an act was unexpected from women. Another character would be Daisy herself, a calm, strong, confident young woman. She lives quite an eventful life, yet as she reflects over it towards the end of her life, she realizes it wasn't all that it could have been. This was a disappointment, since there is absolutely no indication that Daisy may be unhappy or unfulfilled by the way her life is, but seems to enjoy and accept the way things are going. This made me feel somewhat cheated, since it seems I never really got to know her. I guess you can't expect to know the characters much, since they hardly know much about themselves, in terms of what they're feeling, what they want and so on. One would think that after following these women throughout their lives to their deaths, you would know them in great detail, but that isn't the case. Shields has this way of only allowing the reader to know the characters to a certain extent. This is unfortunate, since it disables the readers from allowing themselves to identify with or feel empathy for any of them. If you look past the misconception of the characters, the plot is quite interesting. It is unique the way it follows through on the life events of the main character. We are there when Daisy enters the world and shadow her through childhood, marriage, love, motherhood, sorrow, illness and then, sadly, death. Daisy's life certainly challenges how we perceive a woman's life to be. It could quite easily have been a great book with a few minor changes, but overall, it was worth the time.

THE STONE DIARIES is a captivating odyssey through the life of Daisy Goodwill. While the characters may be underdeveloped and overused, it still remains as a thouroughly enjoyable read. It is filled with unexpected bits of humor that delight and mysteriously seduce the audience. One example of this is an excerpt from a conversation that Mrs. Hoad has with Daisy before her marriage to Mrs. Hoad's son, Harold Hoad. "Harold always takes Grape-Nuts for breakfast. A question of digestion and general health. I feel I should make myself clear on this point. I'm speaking of b.m.'s. Bowel movements." The novel can become a tad tiring at times and the point of view can become strewed. A reader may anticipate that Daisy holds the main point-of-view, but many other character's point-of view come in at various random points in the novel. The novel spans the lifetime of Daisy, so a particular incident cannot occur without the author inserting a long history of something that may have happened fifty years earlier. This contributes to the "wholeness" of the story, but it is somewhat of a hassle. Another interesting quote comes from the end of Daisy's life. "When we say a thing or an event is real, never mind how suspect it sounds, we honor it. But when a thing is made up-regardless of how true and just ut seems-we turn up our noses. That's the age we live in. The documentary age. As if we can nevern never get enough facts. We put on the television set and what we hear is the life cycles of birds." This is a bit of truth that a reader may find in this novel that can give some perspective on life. Overall, this novel is definetely worth reading. It provides a real sense of history. Life was going on in an everyday sense even when major events were happing around the world. It is enjoyable, fascinating, and very well written.

Have you ever given much thought to your mother? Ever
wondered who she really is, or who she was before she met
your dad? The Stone Diaries is a magnificent foray into
four generations of families spawned by the union of Mercy
Stone--a quiet, heavy woman who, abandoned at birth, would
not live to name her only child--and Cuyler Goodwill, a young
quarry laborer who discovers in Mercy a love so profound
that his life is touched forever.

Cuyler and Mercy's daughter, Daisy Goodwill, becomes the
focus of author Carol Shield's intense probe into the
relationships between mothers and daughters, husbands and
wives, friends and relatives. Shields' seamless transitions
between narrators--and between time, reality and the inexplicable
musings of the mind--subtly give us permission to consider
these relationships from our own perspective, and, in so
doing, to bring this extended family to life.

In The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields has revealed a level of
comfort with the written word that is all too rare in today's
fiction. Her treatment of life's rewards as well as its
injustices does not stop short of a full, honest examination
of the truth. We aren't told of Cuyler's heart attack;
instead, our limbs stiffen and freeze with his. We don't
watch Daisy's husband love her; rather, we feel both the
weight of his body and the depth of her unspoken despair.

I closed The Stone Diaries today with a sigh. I wondered what my mother must have been
like before there was me. What does she still want out of
life? Does she know what she means to me? Perhaps...
perhaps I ought to ask.

The first hundred-fifty pages of this novel rank among the finest writing I have ever encountered. I was swept inside this rich story of a young Canadian girl's life and early adulthood as it unfolded among rock quarries and wild prairies nearly a hundred years ago. Shields is certainly a writer of poetical prose and her sentence structure is both eloquent and admirable. I was held attentively to the pages as I trailed along from the plains of Canada, to Indiana, Ottawa, and finally to the American south. The characters are intricately incarnated here with vibrant personalities that propel the story onward.

I wish I could go on drizzling praise onto this book, but the disappointing fact is, after those initial few score pages, the story disintegrates (except for a few good moments here and there) and I rapidly lost all but the barest interest. And then there was the dismal, altogether too realistic saga of the main character's long death in a Florida nursing home. That I really did not need to linger on quite so long.

This is, then, ultimately an uneven novel, that reaches great heights and also drags tediously through uninteresting and unnecessary happenings, before losing itself altogether in rather grim and depressing hospital scenes. No novel is perfect, but at its start this one gives the reader false hope that it just might come close.

This book seems to be primarily about the impossibility of writing a definitive autobiography or, for that matter, a definitive biography. It also raises questions as to the certainty offered by what could naively be taken as objective facts, in the context of biography or history, such as the photographs reproduced in the text (W.G.Sebald uses the same device in his works). Self-consciously, it corporates many forms of writing too, including letters, reviews, first and third person narratives - there are links here to so-called Menippean satires or 'anatomies', to use Northrop Frye's term, the point being that the book might well harbour ambitions to comment on larger issues than the mere lives of its characters - as a guess, possibly the relationship between Canada and the USA; I say 'guess' as I am unsure whether any of such ambition is fulfilled.
*
Perhaps it's worth mentioning how this book came to my attention. A chance meeting with a Professor of Literature saw her recommend this as "possibly the best novel ever written about women", and Shields cited as her favourite living writer alongside Alice Munro - both these writers are Canadians, as was the good Professor, so I took all this with the proverbial salty grain. Still, it was hard not to sneak a look.
*
My biggest surprise was that I found very little insight into the inner lives of women. The protagonist, and possible narrator, Daisy, is not revealing of her inner life; indeed, she is quite opaque; alluding to what I've said above, I think we are meant to see her largely through the eyes of others, or, perhaps, through the distorted lens of hindsight - yet this vantage is all too distant for any intimate revelations. The male characters fared little better. Of course, this might all be quite deliberate: I wondered if the very title, 'The Stone Diaries', refers to the author's embodied view of humanity in general, that is, that people are 'stony', with cold relations to each other the norm, and interiors unavailable for view, save through being crushed. In any case, this was not, ultimately, a warm book in my experience.
*
The tone of the book changes as it progresses. The early chapters are most distant in time and most distant in tone. As the present day approaches, the tone begins to breathe with life, ironically, as it happens, as the subject matter deals more with illness and, finally, with death. Again, this seems a calculated ploy on the author's part, and no doubt relates to the underlying concerns with the uncertainty of putatively objective history.
*
The writing style itself is serviceable, with some felicities of expression, but with an overall inclination to the self-effacing, if not the outright pedestrian. It might be fairer to say that a delight in wordplay is not the author's preoccupation.
*
In sum, I think this is a much more 'theoretic' work than is implied in general reviews. As such, some of its apparent weaknesses are actually serving to illustrate more abstract concerns. Taken purely as a story, however, 'The Stone Diaries' seems wanting in empathy and insight, and taken in terms of sheer literary bravura it also seems a little tired.

From the moment that I stepped inside the world in this book, I could understand why it received the Pulitzer prize. I stepped right into Mercy Goodwell's kitchen and couldn't wait for her Malvern pudding to be done so that I could try it. I wanted to be one of the tourists looking at the tower that newly wed Cuyley Goodwill built to memorialize his wife. I wanted to touch the intricately and lovingly carved pictures and words on the stones of the tower.
THE STONE DIARIES is the story of the life of Daisy Goodwill. The first chapter is told in first-person in Daisy's own words. But the rest of the story (although told in third-person) seems to be written by her as well. Every person in the life of Daisy Goodwell is three-dimensional; you can almost reach out and touch them. Daisy, however, is the very person that she dreads becoming -- a person remembered for what happened TO her rather than WHO she is. The explanation would go something like this: "Daisy Goodwell? You remember her. Don't you? She's the one who's mother didn't know she was pregnant and died in childbirth. And her first husband was tragically killed on their honeymoon." Upon finishing the book, you feel that you know ABOUT Daisy, but you really don't seem to know HER. The author has been so kind as to supply black and white photographs of all the other characters in the book. But where's Daisy? Is she the person on the front cover?
You can tell from the table of contents that this is going to be the story of the life -- from birth to death -- of Daisy Goodwell. Carol Shields shows her genius, however, by making the main character disappear from her own life story! And that Is the plot: the life of Daisy Goodwell and her absence therein. I read this book over the course of one day. It was extremely satisfying. I look forward to reading more books by this author.

Curiously, I have just been reading two books -- Russell Banks' THE DARLING and Kazuo Ishiguro's NEVER LET ME GO -- about clearly extraordinary women, whose stories nonetheless make one acutely aware of the preciousness of ordinary things in the lives of the rest of us that do not get written about. Conversely, Daisy Goodwill Flett, the protagonist in Carol Shields' THE STONE DIARIES, is just such an ordinary woman, but the wonder of this Pulitzer Prize book is to make one realize the extraordinary beauty and interest simply inherent in life itself.

Seen from the outside, Daisy might be glimpsed, categorized, and dismissed as the mere occupant of one of a conventional sequence of roles: motherless child, young wife, busy mother, grieving widow . . . all the way to blue-haired Florida retiree. Indeed, Shields structures the book in chapters, ten or eleven years apart, with titles such as "Marriage", "Motherhood", and "Work", each of which presents just such a snapshot. The events in between are sometimes implied, sometimes left out altogether, but seldom narrated in detail. Nonetheless, Daisy's path between one milestone and another is not always predictable: after spending her early childhood as a virtual orphan, for example, she suddenly re-acquires a father at age 11; the marriage which is the subject of the chapter of the same name is quite a different from the one that gives rise to "Motherhood" almost two decades later.

Other people also play a part in Daisy's life; sometimes they are even pulled in as narrators, offering a different view than she could see of herself. Shields is as sensitive to the surprising trajectories of many of these other lives as she is to Daisy's own. Her father Cuyler, for example, passes through several metamorphoses, first through religious conversion and later through business success, and Daisy's life is affected in consequence. Barker, her second husband, and Alice, her elder daughter, are each shown in many different phases of their lives, and always with sympathy and understanding. Shields' ability to see beyond the surface is shown right from the first pages, with her portrait of Daisy's mother, Mercy, a grossly overweight and woefully naive woman, who nonetheless brings glowing love to the heart of her almost inarticulate husband Cuyler. Characters who are dismissed at the time by everybody around them, such as the old Jewish peddler who finds Mercy on her kitchen floor dying in childbirth, or the teenage cyclist who inadvertently knocks down and kills Daisy's adopted mother, also change during the course of the book and find their own success.

And then there is Carol Shields the author herself. At first, she seems to be virtually invisible. The writing is simple and direct, almost artless; one can hardly speak of an authorial voice or style. Indeed, there are many voices and many styles, ranging from straight narrative to letters, news clippings, testimonials from friends, even shopping lists and recipes. This seems hardly an autobiography, let alone a novel -- more like a family scrapbook. There are even eight pages of family photographs, placed exactly two-thirds of the way through the book, a master-stroke that brings the reader up short. For wait a minute, isn't this a work of fiction? One realizes that one has completely bought into the lives of Daisy and her family as a fictional entity, worked out with numerous ramifications, but living solely within the pages of the book. There is no sense that this is a thinly-disguised autobiography of the author, or even a memoir of some beloved relative. And yet these pictures must have come from somewhere. These people have stories of their own, relationships of their own, but they are not necessarily the stories and relationships that Shields draws around them. Besides expanding and brilliantly illuminating the truism that every picture tells a story, Shields also appears to be saying that truth (whatever that is) may lie neither in the outward appearance nor in the biographical facts, but in the way we choose to construct and retell the stories of our own lives.

At the end of the book, when Alice is sitting beside her dying mother in a Florida nursing home, we have two simultaneous perspectives on Daisy's life. Neither is untrue, but neither is complete. The same pictures, the same facts, could have been interpreted with different meanings. At the end, we are left with various trivial inventories, familiar to anybody who has tidied away a parent's belongings after her death. Certainly her existence cannot be comprehended by a mere roster of addresses or a forgotten to-do list. And yet there is a real life behind even these, the life of a warm, breathing, limited, courageous, confused, loving, and ultimately lovable human being.

I love quirky characters and this story started out with some real doozies!! I was intrigued and suspected I'd like this book, but it got better. Then it got worse. But such is life.
This fictional story is "written by" Daisy in a very unemotional manner, as if she were dead and simply reporting the facts of her life. But that doesn't mean it was a boring narration, nor do I feel that the narrator was particularly unsatisfied with her life.
The author jumps decades, changes writing style (letters, 1st person, 3rd person, other characters narrating, etc.) and this kept me interested! My favorite chapter was when Daisy became depressed and many people in her life tried to analyze what was causing her depression. Of course they each had their own self-centered perception that gave great insight into their pshyche!
Unfortunately, the next chapter took a nose dive. Her father-in-law alive at the age of 115? Her circumstance in going to the Island where he lived? Just by coincident, staying in the hotel next door to his nursing home? I don't know why this gifted author went so wacky in this chapter. There wasn't really a point in Daisy meeting her father-in-law. I just don't get it.
The final chapter was sad, but what else can you expect from a chapter titled "Death?"
I enjoyed this book, in spite of one major dip - but that wouldn't stop me from recommening it to any reader who enjoys subtleties, beautiful writing and quirky characters. But stay away if you're addicted to dramatic plot development or happy endings!

Readers react to this book across the spectrum; a consensus is elusive!
Count me in the camp who loved it and believe its Pulitzer Prize well-deserved.

Carol Shields was a gifted novelist who crafted art out of the most mundane of plots, and made this faux-biographical ordinary life a page-turner. The novel plays with storytelling style, voice, narrative form, and tone, arranged in themes that skip across time in Daisy Stone Goodwill's long and varied life.

In The Stone Diaries, Shields creates characters as dimensional and idiosyncratic as real people, illuminates the inner life of the protagonist through all life stages, explores the tenuous balance of forming and maintaining relationships in a world where we are each ultimately unknowable to one another, and examines how we navigate the events of our life with what little power and free will we have while accepting (with a mixture of fury and resignation) the twists and turns of circumstance that are thrust upon us.

The novel is a study of the Big Picture and innerspace, a reflection on our small moment in time, the acuteness of consciousness, the process of aging, and the ultimate realization that we are all special, unique mediocrities.

Carol Shields displays her talent as a great writer in her novel, The Stone Diaries. This remarkable tale of Daisy Goodwill entrances the reader. The trials and tribulations Daisy experiences throughout her life are illustrated with such detailed accuracy that one may forget that The Stone Diaries is a work of fiction. I'll admit that I almost did. Separating each section of Daisy's life into a chapter, Shields guides us through all of Daisy's experiences from the miracle of her birth to the tragedy of her death. I found it very difficult to tear myself away from this novel for the most part - it can be very captivating. Every novel, however, does have its weak areas. I found the conclusion to be unsatisfying and confusing. It was unclear as to what happens to Daisy at the time of her death. The final chapter is very vague and left me with one thought... "huh?" Though the final chapter dampened my excitement over The Stone Diaries, I still believe this is a novel that everyone should experience. It gives insight into the world of conscience and thought, and Shields' ability to do this is not something to be ignored.

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."

This was an interesting book. Carol Shields did not hold back on the descriptive settings or the explicit feelings. Once I got to the end of the book, I had to go back and reread the introduction. I expected life to get better for Daisy...I expected her to finally live a happily-ever-after...I expected her to be happy. Although this was a literary novel, it hits close to home for many women today, who live for the happiness of others. Outside of the unexpected ending, Shields does a great job outlining the life of a woman who lived for everyone else except for herself...the sad part, is that Daisy realizes this very unsettling reality on her death bed...drawing her very last breath. She finally figured it out but now it's too late...

This book engaged me. I read it during every spare moment I had. But I kept asking myself the same question -- why am I so compelled to read this book? The main characters are dullards who don't appear to have much of an emotional life. It is basically the story of someone living their unremarkable life on auto-pilot.
So why couldn't I put the book down? I have several theories:

1. The writing is very rich and engaging. The prose is excellent. The author takes you down several different paths to tell one story. I always found the visit with these emotionally flat characters to be an interesting journey nonetheless.
2. I wanted to find out what was going to happen at the end. I wondered if the main characters might have an apocalyptic emotional experience sometime during their lives.
3. It was interesting reading about lives, lifestyles, social mores, etc. during various times in the last century. The descriptions of sexual feelings and behaviors was well told. I compared their lifestyles to my own and thought how lucky I am to live in my generation.
4. Back to the writing. I felt that the author really got me into the heads of these characters, to the extent that she wanted to. I felt that I wasn't so much an observer in their lives, I was a participant with them. I was living their lives with them, from their own perspective, even dying with the main character.
5. Now that I think of it, my mood was kind of down while reading this book. Maybe I just wanted to hurry up and finish the book so I could return to my own life.

You would like this book if you enjoy historical fiction. Like to get into the heads of your characters. Love good writing. Are experiencing a transition in your lifes journey. If you are a woman-wife-mother, you might more closely relate to this book.

es, this could be considered the unassuming life of an unremarkable woman. Yet, the author shows such brilliance in her writing that the smallest detail becomes sublime and magical. How I wish I had one-tenth Shields' writing ability to bring characters alive and to touch the depths of reader's own emotions and memories.
This book was loaned to me just before Thanksgiving. Even with the drive to the cabin, the family gathering, the preparations and celebrations, I found it hard to put the book down. I will most likely be ordering my own copy, to read again and again.

If one were to rate this book for its imaginative usages of stone-based imagery, metaphors, similes, and geography, this book would be clearly a five-star effort. If a reader is looking for an imaginative variety of writing styles all in one book, this is also a five-star effort, using wonderfully easy phrases. On the other hand, if you want to feel deeply connected to a story and its characters, this may not the book for you.
The book's format is a pseudo-biography of a Canadian woman told through a series of vignettes about her life. These start with her birth in 1905, continue with her childhood in 1916, describe her first marriage in 1927, falling in love at 31 in 1936, raising her children in 1947, pursuing a career as a gardening columnist from 1955-1964, experiencing a set-back in 1965, living into retirement in 1977, having health reversals in 1985, and eventually passing on. The book comes equipped with a family tree and family photographs to complete the biographical feel.
You can think of this book also like a series of short stories. In fact, many will enjoy the book more that way than as a fictionalized biography. For example, the birth is very compelling. The section about her writing career is quite amusing and fun to read as you follow through a series of letters.
As much as I loved the stone references, to me they turned the book into self-satire so much at times that it created too much emotional distance from the book. If the references had been cut back by about 60 percent, I think they would have been brilliant. As it was, I was looking for one such reference on every page (almost like Where's Waldo?) and would break out into giggles when I found the next one even if the material was supposed to be sad.
Toward the book's end, the references abated but the story still didn't move me. Perhaps it was just that the writer's craft was so well done that its sparkling jewels outshone the content of the story by too wide a margin. There was a similar gap between the story (often far-fetched well beyond kidding around) and the characters, with the story being more interesting than the characters. Even though you often get internal dialogue, the book remains like something that you are watching from a disinterested distance rather than living within and feeling connected to.
My great grandmother, Edith Foster, was a lot like Daisy, and also was born in rural, central Canada. She lived until I was about 19, and I well remember her stories about life on the plains of Canada and immigrating to the United States. The Stone Diaries, even with its exaggerated elements, seemed pale compared to the real challenges of those days . . . which this book often omits.
The best part of Daisy's development as a character is the evolution of her confusion of fact and fantasy. At several points, you will feel like you can no longer trust your own mind and have a good sense of what that situation must be like. Nicely done!
After you enjoy the aspects of The Stone Diaries that appeal to you, I suggest that you assemble a brief autobiography that you can share with your children and grandchildren. They will probably enjoy the kinds of details this book focuses on, because they will reflect on their own origins in compelling ways.
See the past and present clearly!

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 story but the storytelling is extraordinary because the author really allows us to become enthralled with Daisy's life in Canada and in America. It's an easy book once you get into it and you feel like these characters are very real. There is a family tree and pictures in the copies that I have.

A beautifully written life story of a Canadian woman, Daisy Goodwill. The first chapter describes her birth in 1905 - the feelings of her parents and the neighbours. We then follow her in chapters that move on at 10-yearly intervals : her childhood, marriage, motherhood, work...
It soon becomes apparent to the reader that Daisy's life is primarily shown in terms of how it relates to those around her. Even the photos of family members exclude Daisy. The chapter on 'work', which consists largely of letters, only includes those written to her, not those she composed. Although we know the events of her life, she remains somewhat unknown to us, her personality vague. As she grows old and finds herself in a nursing home, her daughter Alice contemplates her mother's reduced property:
'all Mrs Barker Flett's possessions accommodated now by the modest dimensions of a little steel drawer. That three storey house in Ottawa has been emptied out....How is it possible, so much shrinkage?'
A consideration of a woman's life, how things that at one time are so important and in which we invest so much time - homes, gardens, jobs - ultimately all fade away. And yet from Daisy's life spring the new generation of family, whose conversation occupies the final paragraph.
A wonderful and enjoyable read, can't recommend it enough.

This highly praised Pulitzer Prize winning novel centers focuses on the daily life of an as-it- were ordinary woman. But the extraordinary is present in her life from the very moment of her birth in which her mother died. The story is a multi- generational one and focuses on the inner feelings of the characters especially the women. There is a dramatic difference between the male characters and the female characters in regard to their intimate lives. But there is sympathetic relation to both male and female characters.
The book has been praised for its sharp and insightful language.
While sensing these positive qualities I felt a certain absence of 'lift' of a kind of intense joy in reading that I have when involved in books I feel to be of the most inspirational kind.
Good, but not great.

This was my first experience reading Carol Shields, and while I found her use of language quite poetic and insightful, and her characterizations interesting and believeable, I came away from the book somewhat disappointed because I felt I hadn't really gotten to know Daisy Goodwill Flett in an "intimate" way. Although I see her as the main character, she was elusive, perhaps because she was something of a bystander in her own life. Then again, given the period in which she lived, that is probably not too surprising. Perhaps I missed some vital element of emotional depth in Daisy, but others who read the book with me in a book club had similar feelings. While Ms. Shields is certainly gifted with language and the art of story-telling, I wouldn't personally consider this a Pulitzer-worthy book, although I would still recommend it as a worthy read. Like other readers, I was also surprised by the use of photographs in the book, and had to double-check that it was actually a work of fiction. It was particularly interesting that there was no photo of the shadowy Daisy!

Carol Shield's book, "The Stone Diaries," was disappointing. Though Ms. Shields' prose slides easily off the tongue, and at times inserts itself into the reader's subconscious, the book's protagonist - Daisy Goodwill - is uninteresting and unexplored. Basically, Ms. Shield fumbles at narrative and plot.
It seems that Ms. Shields attempted to write a book in the strain of Virginia Woolf's, "The Waves," or - more extreme - Faulkner's "Absolom, Absolom!" These works also use a barrage of singsong or poetic prose to worm directly into the reader's brain, producing the eerie feeling that we have a link to characters' thoughts. And, at the best of times, but only with supporting characters, Ms. Shields manages to do this.
For some reason, however, Ms. Shields decided to describe the protagonist by depicting everything around her, letting us discern her main character by only her outline, only the blank space left over in an otherwise bright, colorful canvas. This does not work. Instead of caring or involving ourselves with Daisy Goodwill, we are never left with an impression of who she was. We are left with blank space.

This book spans the life of Daisy Goodwill, from her birth in Manitoba to her journey with her father to Indiana, throughout her years as a wife, mother, and widow. The novel opens dramatically with her birth in 1905, continuing with her childhood in 1916, her first marriage in 1927, then to raising her children in 1947, and to her career as a columnist from 1955-1964, and then to retirement in 1977. The family tree, photos, and letters add to the realism and the book feels biographical.
Daisy is an ordinary woman, but she has a story worth telling. Her story is about the human condition and life's meanings. Shields writes with wit, intelligent, and great insight, weaving Daisy's simple life into a great tale about women and life's deeper meanings. You are left wanting more when the novel is done. Shields has captured the life of a woman who seems so complicated, and yet when read against the culture she lived in and with the insight we are given, she is complicated beyond being able to completely be sure we've got her character down.

The Stone Diaries is a beautiful novel, rich, satisfying, well-written and thought-provoking. It's a pseudo-autobiography of sorts, narrated omniciently, telling the life story of Daisy Goodwill Flett, a woman born in 1905. It's a cleverly told tale, not experimental really, just a bit different. Every once in a while Daisy intrudes as an active narrator, but for the most part the narrator separates herself from actually having lived the story. Daisy leads an ordinary life, full of both good and bad times, she marries, has children, grows older, nothing special or unique really, yet the story of her life, the way it is told to us, is special, is unique. Reading the novel is almost like flipping through a family photo album--stories begin, lead back into the past, come back to the present--yet, the narrative voice is so strong and clear in the novel, that you won't ever lose your way. This is a wonderful novel. Enjoy.

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields is one of those rare books that causes the reader to stop and grasp the totality of life. Daisy Goodwill does not lead an extraordinary life. She lives the life of most women, one of simply doing the best she can with the circumstances presented to her. The reader learns about certain key time periods in Daisy's life, and none of the time frames are examined minutely. Shields has managed to capture the essence of a life by creating a novel based on bits and pieces that would actually appear in a diary. We meet most of the tangential characters that form the circle of Daisy's life, though few of are developed fully. As time passes in the life of any person, there are few memories that stand out clearly, and these are the ones filled with either pain or complete happiness. I applaud this novel for its unique style, and I believe the author succeeded in her goal of presenting a life that spans nearly a century.

American writer Carol Shields (1935-2003) makes her point very clear in her award winning "The Stone Diaries". An ordinary live is not that ordinary when you look it in a microscope and when you give room for the others to comment this live. However much her novel is a good achievement, at some parts she makes a way to clear what she wants to prove -- these are the moments when the book loses it lyricism and becomes too preachy.

"The Stone Diaries" is the mock-autobiography of Daisy Stone Goodwill, a woman whose mother dies giving birth and she is brought up by a neighbor and this neighbor's oldest son -- who, years later will become Daisy's second husband. Telling that is not a spoiler, since this marriage -- and all others -- can be figured out prior to start reading the novel in the family tree displayed in the first pages of the book.

By this family tree, any attentive reader can realize all the connections that will come in Daisy's and her relative's lives. On the one hand this diagram helps the reading, but on the other it is a lot of anticipation that is never matched by the narrative. We can discover that Daisy's son Warren marries three times, but we don't know anything about their marriages or divorces. The point for each reader is how much he/she cares to learn about the other characters if not Daisy.

Since it is a so-called biography the focus is Daisy herself, therefore the other conflicts and characters aren't exploited in a very deep way. Most biographies we find hare thick, and since Shields accepted to play the game, she should have gone deeper in Daisy's life and times. Many things are briefly touched upon, when they could have been exploited for pages and pages.

The alternation between narrative in first and third person is a curious device. It could be the charm of the novel, but sometimes the narrator switching only makes the narrative to loose its focus. It is curious that the first chapter in the only one entirely narrated in the first person and deals with facts that Daisy neither was there to know, nor could remember. That is the thin red line between fact and fiction in the protagonist's life. Since she is telling what she saw she is a biased narrator and all the portraits can't be claimed as realistic and fair. This is not a defect of the novel, just an option the writer made.

While Shields tries to bring up the magic and beauty of a common -- why not say ordinary life -- she succeeds in many levels. Her prose is beautiful most of the time as well. Her book is great in the moments the writer is not trying to hard, but on the other hand when she wants to be too lyric and to touch the magic realism she overdoes her prose and sits on the fence between magic and grotesque.

Written as an autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett, whose mother's death at the moment of Daisy's birth makes for the most gripping opening scene I've ever read, The Stone Diaries is superb from beginning to end. Just read those 20 or so pages, and you'll be hooked for the rest of the book.
Carol Shields won the Pulitzer for this novel, a creative and highly original style of narrative that many others have tried unsuccessfully to duplicate. Stone Diaries wanders all the way through Daisy's rather extraordinary life, both her on-the-surface role as daughter, wife, and mother as well as her rich and vividly-described inner life. When you reluctantly come to the end, you'll probably sit back as I did, stare into space, and just sigh, "Wow..."

A North American woman's life is chronicled and given meaning by the beautiful gift of Carol Shields written prose. The collection of family and friends that fill Daisy Flett's life allow us to understand her rich identity. Although this book is extremely well-written I still find SWANN and the REPUBLIC OF LOVE to be more enjoyable. Carol Shields fills her writing with things she worries may become of non-permanence such as writing letters and even the existence of plants and juxtapotizes them with what has been here forever in the form of stone and death. She even has Daisy talking from the grave at the end of the book. Ah,well.....life and death are the ultimate physical realities and to be truly human we must learn how to do both.

to truly understand the way this book is written the way it is, one must look at the art of life writing, autobiography and biography. There are multiple narratives all from different points of view on Daisy Goodwill, but as you read on you realize that the story is not about Daisy but about how people saw Daisy. We only get snippets of what she really was like as a person through other people's words, but not her own pieces of writing and college papers. As a woman, she had achieved a lot but was yet very passive and misunderstood as a whole, and also had a childlike side to her that made it hard for people to "read" her, which is the case with this book. When I first read the book I was totally confused by it and bored but at the second read I grew to love it. I love the way everything is described and well written, like about her garden and cuyler's monument and successful stone carving business and creativity. The characters really have their own personalities that make them distinctive from one another, but there are also characters in the book that are not very likeable. I defintely recommend it.

This book does reflect the inability to define one's life in an autobiography. We drift around the years, doing one insignificant thing, and then another. It all adds up to a life that is meaningful to ourselves and our families...but to everyone else it is mundane. The mundane can be interesting, because we all have these experiences. We can relate to them.

This book bothers me because the mundane is recorded, we experience Daisy's life, but there is no heart. Despite the drudgery of our lives, they mean something to us. These events should have more heart and color. They feel as if they are being told from the point of view of a fly on a wall. The reader doesn't experience the emotions of the characters. The entire novel feels as if it is being told by a participant that has no emotional attachment to anything that has happened. The effect is rather boring.

The Stone Diaries is a depressing story of a woman whose mother dies at her birth, her first husband dies on their honeymoon and loses the job she finds joy in doing. These experiences makes her a lonely and emotionless. What is really interesting about the novel is the contrast between the two symbols 'flower' and 'stone'. Here is a woman who is named after a delicate flower, full of life and the 'stone' has no emotions. She has no feelings whatsoever for her husband, father, or children. She wants to desire but doesn't know what to desire for or what she is allowed to. Carol Shields also included some pictures in the book as well as recipes and letters. These help the reader understand the novel more and really get into the story.

It is strange how people can come across an author that writes in such an amazing way. I had never really heard of Carol Shields, and then I had to do a project in a class at school on a famous Canadian author, and she is the one that I randomly picked. After the project, I was curious as to what her books were like, and this is the one that I choose.
It is a great book! It tells the life story of the main character, as if she was writing her autobiography. In this book, the author captures exactly what it was like for a woman growing up in todays, and the past, society. It is one of those books that can really show you that no one is perfect, and I am sure that a lot of people can relate to some of the problems that are overcome in this book. I highly recommend it!

This well-written novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995. It is a well-written story about an inter-generational family, centered around a woman who distances herself from her core impulses and desires in order to be socially appropriate.

The story is peopled by many eccentrics such as a man who creates a tower sculpture of limestone to commemorate his dead wife. Each piece of limestone has tiny sculpted pieces on it. This same man then builds a scale model pyramid in his backyard.

While superficially warm and eccentric, the book's characters are somehow distant and guarded. I enjoyed this book very much.

From her tumultuous birth and the tragedy that accompanied it, Daisy Goodwill's life is told through these pages. From her childhood to her school life, to adulthood, Shields tells Daisy's story. At times the reader wonders where this is all going, and halfway through I was wondering if I was still going to finish. In the second half of the book events of happiness and cruel fate intertwine, and it feels very real. There were no tidy resolutions, especially when the inevitable creeping of old age brings forth new realities. The last several chapters of this book stayed with me for a long time, and made this one of the better books I have read in some time.

I couldn't get into this book for several chapters ~~ it just wouldn't hold my interest since it was so mauldin in the beginning. Once I got through Daisy's childhood, the reading became more diverse and more imaginative, very rich in detail of the inner life of a woman growing up in the early and mid Twentieth Century.
It is a beautifully written novel ~~ and Daisy is a character richly drawn ~~ but the book just didn't capture my interest like other novels did. However, I don't regret picking this novel up to read. I've heard so much about it and was glad to know that there are still good books out there. It's a book to share with family and friends ~~ and perhaps good for a discussion around the suppertable.
12-29-03

This is a fictitious autobiography of Daisy Stone Goodwill, born at the beginning of the 20th century and living until the late 90's. I really must be becoming terribly thick as I can't (except for the fluid writing style) think why this book would win a Pulitzer Prize (1995) The lady in question went through her rather ordinary life, raising children, coping with a marriage which, like most, had its ups and downs, and generally just taking one day at a time, one event at a time, without questioning or wondering if that's all there is. I know that when I'm starting to find a book tedious, I tend to rush through it..perhaps that was my mistake, but why linger when nothing's happening..life's too short!

The author, Carol Shields, is undoubtedly a fine author. After all, she won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critic's Award. When a writer like that doesn't grab you, you're tempted to wonder if you have no taste as a reader. I really wanted to love this book. But as the pages turned, I found myself almost checking off a literary list: Is there a plot? Sort of. Is this well written? Yes. Does the writer have a good vocabulary? Yes, she is extremely articulate. Is the story truly about life? Yes.

Just the same, like some of the other readers, I found myself laboring through the chapters, I began pushing myself to pick the book up and read on. Something was not right here. I am still not exactly certain why I could not complete the volume. I did notice partway through that I did not truly care about the characters. I wonder why not? What could I have loved about any of them, including Mercy, Cuyler, Mrs. Flett, or Daisy? Now I wonder if they ever really cared deeply about each other? Whatever makes one keep reading to learn more about sympathetic characters was missing for me. I'm sorry.

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 to her was her first husband dying. If she had actually had a great love with her second husband, as I expected by the chapter entitled "Love", there might have been some redeeming qualities, but that was not the case.

I was left itching to know more about other characters, Magnus Flett, "Fraidy" Hoyt, and Maria (Cuyler Goodwill's second wife) in particular, but the only thing that caught my eye about Daisy was her dying thoughts about her life, or lack of it. Then came the chapter entitled "Death", which was a hodge-podge of senseless blather, and at that point I realized that nothing would make this a GOOD book, but at least I could claim that I finished it.

At times, this was an enjoyable, very interesting journey through one woman's life, through each decade of the 1900s. At others, it becomes a little odd, with the tangents about some of the other family members and distant relatives. The writing style switches narrators and tenses quite often, until at the final pages there was a reference made in the first person by a narrator whose name I did not even know. It's never a confusing book, just sometimes frustrating. Overall, the journey through the lives of the characters is special and I did not feel the lesser for having read it.

I just finished reading (well, listening to the audio version of) The Stone Diaries and I found it beautifully written, thought-provoking, and not long enough. It was one of the most complete presentations of a life that I've found in fiction. Daisy Goodwill is approached/presented from a variety of points of view, including a look at her trousseau, a rummage through a trunk of accumulated belongings, and a presentation of "theories" offered by friends and family to explain her behavior at certain periods of her life. Altogether, a novel with a difference. I want to read lots more of Carol Shields' work.

This book was so unremarkable, that I have forgotten (really) that I had read it and tried to read it again! It was difficult to understand the Pulitzer Prize, especially compared to other winners. It tells the life of an ordinary woman (a strong woman, but not special), and is written well enough to be read with pleasure and without stumbling, but there is nothing to it. Or maybe I just didn't connect to the characters and events described there. No particular disappointment, but no impact on me whatsoever. I have still to read a book by Carol Shields to get convinced that she is as good as her fame claims.

I was disappointed in The Stone Diaries--especially after a really good start to the story (Daisy's birth and the descriptions of Mercy). I am a voracious reader and have a degree in English Lit. Although I thought that The Stone Diaries was well written, technically, and it was a readable story, it was forgettable. I finished the book last week, and the other day I was trying to remember what book I had just finished, and for the life of me, I couldn't remember. It's not the sad or mundane life of Daisy that left me unaffected...I think it was the difficulty to relate to the characters and the author's failure to make them sympathetic.
I like historical novels with fact mixed with fiction. However, with the Stone Diaries, I was uncertain whether Daisy was a real person, and I was baffled by the photos.
I will not run out and read any more of Carol Shields' books. I like to read novels that will make me look at life differently and help me to understand people better. The Stone Diaries was okay, but I can't imagine how it won the Pulitzer Prize.

Carol Shields does an excellent job of unlocking the mind, heart, and soul of the female with her book "The Stone Diaries." I believe that every woman will be able to relate to a character in the novel at least once. Shields focuses on the milestones of life (birth, childhood, love, marriage, motherhood, and death) and dissects them wonderfully.
In an amazingly accurate portrayal of the culture of the mid to late 1900s, Carol Shields takes you on an incredible journey of the life of Daisy Goodwill Flett, even allowing us the luxury of seeing her through the eyes of not only herself, but those around her. Her heartbreaking birth, contemporary childhood, tragic love life, typical "retirement," and uncertain death takes you on a constant roller coaster ride. It keeps you reading to see exactly how the next part of her life will unfold.
A truly believable story line and plot, complete with a family tree and pictures, made me very aware of the Stone legacy. I had to remind myself it was actually fiction. It successfully travels through four generations of women, each strugling with their own image, children, husbands, and life, facing obstacles of that time. It is a complete family history, and true to it's name, a "diary" following Mercy Stone Goodwill, her daughter (Daisy Goodwill Flett), granddaughters (Joan and Anne), and even the birth of her great grandchildren.
Although, I will admit that there are certain parts of the book that are questionable (like her adventures with Fraidy and Beans), ironic (such as her entire love life), and just plain laughable (the Flower Girls, for example), it was a good read overall. Something that must have taken time, patience, thought, and insight on the part of the author. I recommend it to anyone wanting to take a look inside a woman.

What a unique format - an fictionalized autobiography all the way down to "family" photos included! That part really impressed me. The story was interesting and grabbed me from the start - I like the way the author broke the book up into parts of life, i.e. "Birth", "Marriage", etc and the reader was able to figure out what happened to the missing years in between based on what was happening to Daisy in the current chapter. I would recommend this book and am looking forward to reading some of Ms. Shields' other books.

The Stone Diaries was a good read. It provokes some reflective thinking on relationships and the meaning of life.Sometimes it makes one think that life is like a series of boxes. We close one box of our lives and open an entirerly new one and continue on until the last box. Some boxes contain happiness and some do not.Did we get a chance to choose that box? How was it delegated to us with either misery or delight? Could we have avoided the painful box and chosen another if we had been more diligent in our actions and choices? From her birth to her death, Daisy Goodwell struggled to understand her journey through life.Some of us think we exert some control but I doubt if Daisy felt she had any control and she merely accepted her fate.

I enjoyed this book. I thought it was well-written. I enjoyed the more experimental chapters the most. The section on Daisy's depression in particular was amazing.
What really got me though was the reading group guide. It showed me just how little of this book I had understood. I recommend looking at the guide after reading the book because the questions it raised really deepened my understanding of the book. Plus, I never would have noticed that Cuyler was taller than Mercy in the photograph on my own!
For people looking for a book with an exciting plot, this is not the book for you. For those who enjoy exploring the sometimes mundane and trivial, this is a gem of a book.
I am woman. Hear me whisper.

I read Stone Diaries as a school project. While there are many interesting characters along the way I was waiting for something big to happen. Usually this is assumption made with pulitzer books. It is not that this book is horrible..it just seems unrealistic at times and leaves you with a very dull, empty ending. I suggest the much less "prize-acclaimed" yet far more deserving, Larry's Party by Shields. IN my opinion it deserved to win the Giller.

A very able, deft, sensitive writer, whose substance kind of peters out as the book progresses. The first section -- birth, background, mother's death -- is brilliant, outstanding, but there's a gradual decline thereafter as the book chases for meaning. One reviewer describes Shields as having begun as a miniaturist, and her impact doesn't quite hold together as the canvas grows. But the book is well worth reading, if only for that beginning.

The Stone Diaries is a Pulitzer Prize Winner by Carol Shields and about a narrator Daisy Goodwill Flett and all the people she meets during her life. I thought, at frist, all the problems I have with this novel are do to this book being a tramma narrative. That is because Daisy seems to avoid talking about anything important in her life, how she feels about not having a mother since she died in childbirth, how she glosses over her father's death and her second husband Barker Flett's death, how Barker Flett was her father figure for her first 11 years but ends up marrying him and their courtship from her point of view, how she feels about him is almost literally nonexistant in chapter 4 where is all takes palce. I thought these events are too traumatic for Daisy to write about. Still, there is not enough here to keep the reader interested. A novel can come together in the end and explain all this avoidance, but if nothing exciting or interesting happens to the main characters in-between, then the reader won't reach the end. That is what I felt with this novel. So much of what is interesting is skipped over, avoided for so long, that I cannot be clear as to what this novel is about as in a dust jacket summary sense. If I wasn't reading this for a class I would have quit somewhere in the second chapter.

There are certain books you read that make you stop and think: "Lower than rock bottom. There never was a worse book written. Never." During those dark times, you gullibly believe that. Then, turn around and there it is!!! A puff of smoke! Magic! Something comes along that's even worse. Such was the case with this novel. Boring, inexcusably long, overly complex, vulgar. To be very eloquent: BAD. Just plain BAD. BAD BOOK. BAD. Um, I didn't like it in case my point wasn't clear. (I'm a traitor to my country!)

Every fiction writer must play the role of God. However most writers are subtle about it, silently leading the reader to his own (but also the writer's) conclusion. There is no subtlety in Miss Shields. She hits you over the head with her overly analytical philosophy, and even on some of the most mundane things. Her characters never flushed out as real, but rather paper dolls to look at. I will soon forget I ever read Stone Diaries, but I will never forget Miss Shields.

I borrowed this book from the library expecting a wonderful story that gives meaning to the lives of ordinary women. It's a Pulitzer Prize winner. It's on university reading lists all across the U.S.

Shields dressed up the mundane in pretentious words with ambiguous meanings, while just barely skimming the surface of the crucial turning points in the story. She never bothers with the whos, whats, whens, wheres, and whys for the conflicts that impact the characters' lives. She left huge, gaping holes in her character's lives - especially the main character, Ms. Daisy Goodwill Flett. We catch small, distorted glimpses of a variety of characters, each with their own lives venturing into territories that the reader never explores because Shields never bothered to answer the questions that arose.

It was a let-down, after all the great reviews I read about this book, to find that it was a tedious read. In the beginning, I continued reading only because I wondered where Shields was going with the plot. At the end, I read on only because I hate leaving a book unfinished.

The Stone Diaries touched me so deeply that it is now my favorite book. It takes the life story of an "ordinary" woman and demonstrates the universality of us all as well as showing the uniqueness of our experiences. It touches on family and how well they know, or think they know, each other. To me, this book showed how precious each and every person is and how truly remarkable an ordinary life can be.

While I understand why people who loved this book did love it, I admit that I closed the book feeling sort of puzzled. I knew exactly what I was getting into, and did not expect a heart-stopping pageturned, but I did expect a narrator who had some understand of her own life. The author continually reminds you that Daisy does not understand, and does not consider herself to be in control of, her own life, and I found this puzzling and mildly depressing. However, it was also thought-provoking to realize that I felt I could see Daisy much more clearly through the eyes of the other characters than through her own insight, which perhaps is the author's whole point. I would recommend this as an interesting, mull-it-over kind of book, but I didn't find it uplifting, except perhaps as a cautionary tale: it made me more resolved to be in charge of, and aware of, my own life. Maybe that's not such a small thing.

I enjoyed this book thoroughly - it uses a delightful tone of voice that makes you take joy in the ordinariness and simplicity of life: of a garden, of a life-long craft. It is a splendidly crafted book in which Carol Shields shines as a writer.
Shields says many things about life, society, and fulfillment in the process, but in the end, this story is simply about the life of an ordinary woman.

It was technically well written, but the narrative is annoying. I wanted more dialogue. A lot of things were left unexplained. And when they were finaly explained, it was too late. Like Barker, you dont even find out how he died until Alice's theory in 'Sorrow'(chapter 7), when he actually died somewhere between Chapter 5 and 6. Carol Shields didnt give the reader enough information or detail when you want or need to know it. Instead, she waits until it doesnt matter any more. It didnt take me away from the world, books should grab your imagination, and take you away to another place or time. It would have been better if the book was written from Daisy's perspective, not how she thought other people perceived her. From the title, you would expect it to be like an actual diary, instead it is a bunch of thoughts on paper, about and from any random character. It wasnt a complete waist of time, but its not a book I would recomend anyone read in the near future, or that I will ever read again.

Carol Shields is a magnificent writer who fully deserves every prize she has garnered, and many that have not been invented yet. Stone Diaries was as gripping and finely crafted as everything she has touched. Not a shallow read, but one that endures. I adore this author, and cannot fathom the one stars here. I would have given it six stars or one hundred, but five will suffice.

What a boring awful book. It stoned me into boredom. I hated it so much I wanted to cry. Can anyone really understand how this book won the PULITZER? Mother of all that is good, who was the final jury on awarding this book the PEW LIT ZER!!!? Is it possible to retract? I recommend Shields' novel _Swann_, which is a real testament to her prosaic nature and gift of storytelling. But oh man, this book SUCKED!! I only thank God that I bought it at a used store. Small miracles.