The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

Second reading; first read about 1995


When I picked this book off my shelf to re-read, I was surprised that I could not really remember anything about it, even though I must have liked it to have kept it. It won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, so others liked it, too. While I was reading it and immediately after finishing it, I would have given it 5 out of 5 stars, but now, just a couple of days later, I am changing my mind. Now I would give it only 3 stars: I liked it for the gracefulness of expression and creative structure, but the purpose, the goal of the narrative is eluding me. And already I find myself forgetting the details of the plot and only remembering the subtle sense of discouragement left behind.

This is the life of Daisy Stone Goodwill from her birth in 1905 until her death in the 1990s, told by her voice and by others, almost as if she is an observer of her own life. It is divided into sections titled Birth, Childhood, Marriage, Love, Motherhood, Work, Sorrow, Ease, Illness and Decline, and Death. Throughout, Daisy seems to be living a life, not of "quiet desperation," but of quiet compromise. She says of herself, "Her greatest weakness--she's always known this--is her fear of giving injury...." She is never revealed as feeling great joy, or even great sorrow. In her last dreams she sees herself turning to stone. "She had always suspected she had this potential."

Now that's depressing.

So here's what I don't understand: Daisy Stone may have lost her mother at the time of her birth, but she had a loving foster mother and later a loving father to care for her; she had two long-time good friends; she found a man who loved her, although perhaps he never said the words out loud; she had concerned children who remained involved with her life; she had a career, even though it was short, which rewarded her creativity; she had a graceful retirement with new friends and diversions; her death was not agonizing. Why, then, does she feel so unrewarded? I would say that counts as a life well lived, by most measures.

This is a very well written novel which reads like a charm, but, I reiterate, the point eludes me.