Meet Daisy Goodwill, the daughter of a woman who (arguably) died without knowing she was a mother. Daisy may as well have been carved from stone. She is, after all, the daughter of a stonecutter, and eventually she is the wife of two men (not at the same time) and mother of three children. After her singular birth, Daisy leads an outwardly unremarkable life.

I read the book years ago, but the only passage of this Pulitzer Prize winning novel I recognize upon re-reading is the statement that Canada is very hot in summer. I was taken aback when I found a series of photos halfway through the book, all with captions identifying them as Daisy’s family members. I don’t remember seeing them the first time around. Wait, I thought – is this a true story?

It’s not, and the photo pretense is one of the boldest literary devices I’ve seen in fiction. Consider that the narrator is Daisy herself and that she speaks in both first and third person, and consider that third-person Daisy narrates her own death (no spoilers there; you’ll know that as soon as you look at the chapter titles), and you will recognize that this is not your ordinary life story.

Most of the book takes place in Canada, starting around 1905. The “stone” motif is strong through about the first third of the book, is submerged in the story of Daisy’s work and home life, and then shows up again toward the end – a subtle, but pleasant surprise. Daisy has origins in stone, and in the end she returns to stone.

I’m glad I picked this book up to re-read. I’m still struggling to make sense of how first-person Daisy can impose herself into a third-person narrative – even using the two different voices in the same sentence at one point toward the end of the story. I’ll be thinking about this for a while.

This short novel is character-driven, which leads to some introspective passages that are a little tedious, so I rated my experience of The Stone Diaries at 4.5 stars. If you enjoyed reading or watching Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, or Helen Hooven Santmyer’s novel And Ladies of the Club, you will appreciate this book. ( )

This was my second time reading this novel, the first being many years ago when I was much younger. Daisy Goodwill's life is ordinary, although her birth, told in lots of detail is extraordinary. Daisy did not have a go at, 'oil painting, skiing, sailing, nude bathing, emerald jewelry, cigarettes, oral sex, pierced ears, Swedish clogs, water beds, science fiction, prnographic movies, religious ecstasy, truffles, Kirsch, jalepeno peppers, Peking duck, Vienna, Moscow, Madrid, group therapy, body massage, hunger ... never drove a car, never bought a lottery ticket ...' and so on. There are lots of reviews of this novel and it is wonderful. My only gripe was the description of the nights in Orkney in June as being long and dark! The nights in Orkney in June are short and light. But this just demonstrates how human Carol Shields is. ( )

This book tells the story of the life of a woman of the 20th century. She is born in Canada in 1905 and lives into the 1990s. Daisy Goodwill, born in Canada to a mother who dies in childbirth, grows up with a neighbor and her grown son before returning to live with her father at age eleven. It reads at times like a fictional autobiography, and at other times as if people close to her are contributing. She lives a rather uneventful life, punctuated by a few major decisions and events.

It is a tribute to the author that she can make a rather “ordinary” life into something that keeps the reader’s interest. It includes snippets of information, such as recipes and photos, that make it seem like a family album of memories. This book will appeal to those that enjoy reflective, quiet, well-written stories.
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The Stone Diaries is the story of one woman’s life. Daisy Goodwill Flett comes into this world in a strange and tragic circumstance. The book follows her through her life to the moment of her death. You might say she has an ordinary life in many ways, and perhaps that is part of the point Shields is making, that all lives are the same because, no matter how different they are from their fellows, all lives are lonely, isolated journeys. Only one person feels or knows who you are, and that person is you.

Many of Shields' characters are consumed with looking backward, dwelling in their pasts and trying to unravel the lives they have led but hardly understand. They struggle with what it is to relate to others, what it is to love or to be loved.

Is this what love is, he wonders, this substance that lies so pressingly between them, so neutral in color yet so palpable it need never be mentioned? Or is love something less, something slippery and odorless, a transparent gas riding through the world on the back of a breeze, or else - and this is what he more and more believes - just a word trying to remember another word.

There is a theme of loneliness and isolation that runs through the book

...a kind of rancor underlies her existence still: the recognition that she belongs to no one. Even her dreams release potent fumes of absence.

The odd thing about the pictures that fly into Daisy Goodwill’s head is that she is always alone. There are voices that reach her from a distance; there are shadows and suggestions--but still she is alone.

She is alone, but not unique, among the people she encounters...for they all seem to me to be alone and struggling as well. And much of the loneliness on view here is self-inflicted, as if the fear of connection is stronger than the need to touch the others, to be joined.

Carol Shields makes one choice in writing this novel that puzzles me; that is her decision to have the opening chapter in the first person, the following chapter in both first and third person (but obviously the same voice), and then to tell the rest of the story in the third person until one fleeting comment that is made first person in the final chapter. I know it is a very intentional choice, a device that is meant to achieve something major in the structure of this novel, but I have failed to comprehend its purpose, and that is going to bother me for a while. It might just be an attempt to make us realize that even within ourselves there is an “other” that is separate, observing and virtually unknown to us. Perhaps the first person is the soul. It is the best explanation I have been able to come up with. If anyone else who has read this has a thought, I would be very interested in hearing it!

The metaphor of the stone--having things carved in stone, the building of monuments, the hardening of the heart and the soul, and the impenetrable walls that divides us from one another-- runs from the beginning of this novel to its end. It winds its way like a river through every major character and recurs in names, thoughts and physical manifestations.

One thing is for sure, no need to put R.I.P. on Daisy’s tombstone.


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It's one of those books that seemed to hit me on quite a deeper level. I adored it. It's a "nothing special book" but holy, does it grab you and not let go. ( )