The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

This novel tells the story of a woman's life from birth to death, in a sweeping, impressionistic portrayal. She is a little bit any woman, born in Manitoba in 1905, and dying in Florida in 1985, nothing remarkable and yet the details and fragments we are shown are so poetic that her life takes on a sort of monumental quality, an intricate stone carving of sorts (aha, I get it ...) .

This manner of biography reminded me of an existential novel I read once, Death of a Nobody, although that work focused only on the death of one man, who was not especially remarkable, and his memory as it lived through the people who knew him. The Stone Diaries, however, almost feels like a series of bright short stories, linked together by the common thread of the main character, Daisy. The character portrayals of her family are so crisp and eccentric that they feel hyper-realist. I mean, isn't everyone's family full of idiosyncrasies that appear strong and strange under a microscope? The inclusion of photos of these characters adds to the realism, making me suspicious throughout the reading that this was in fact a tribute to Carol Shields ancestors, a family history told with literary insight. But I've got no proof of that - it just seems like a beautiful way to pay tribute to a mother or aunt, those life histories that are so often neglected and erased.

My favourite passage in this dense book is a chapter where all the characters who knew Daisy give their opinion of her sudden depression after losing her only job. With each theory we learn a great deal about the people around her, but also we learn about her through their observations. It is a study in character portrayal itself, without being self-conscious. Highly recommended, especially for biography fiends like site publisher Rascal!

---

Leave a comment

name
email (if you want to be notified)
<-- Please retype the word you see here:
Notify me when someone replies to this post?

---