The Stone Diaries

THE STONE DIARIES
by Carol Shields

Awards: National Book Critics Circle 1994, Pulitzer 1995

Nomination: Booker 1993

Dates Read: September 22, 2010 & June 18, 2020


Daisy, conceived in love, surprises the world and her parents with her arrival. Her mother, unfortunately, does not survive her birth and Daisy is largely raised by their neighbor, Clarentine Flett. She lives with Clarentine and her son Barker until Clarentine's death. She then moves from Canada to Bloomington, IN where she gets married, widowed, she marries again, has several children, is widowed again, has a brief career as a columnist, retires to Florida and dies.

Of course, anyone's life can be distilled down to these brass facts, perfunctory and callous. What is unique here, is the concept that through a long life, full of twists and turns, each challenge, each episode of life reveals another aspect of a person's character. Each of these stages allow a person to grow and experience a different facet of themselves that they might not have known was there. Not only does life test you, poking for weak spots, but it allows you to grow and learn and become in ways you never imagined.

Another theme running throughout these pages is loneliness. We see wives and children, spouses and friends struggle through a lack of genuine connection, even in the midst of company. The longing for someone, anyone, to recognize our true selves, warts and all, hold it up and proclaim the whole beautiful happens so very rarely that few ever experience the relief that only that kind of light can offer. Each of these characters wanted that desperately and just about no one ever found it.

Shields seamlessly weaved together a life that was honest, rich, occasionally ambiguous and leaves me questioning my own stage of life and what it asks of me, what I can glean right here and right now. And that is the mark of an excellent book.

Looking Forward: Unless

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