Title: The Stone Diaries
Author: Carol Shields
Genre: Canadian Literature
Length: 361 pages
First Line: My mother’s name was Mercy Stone Goodwill. She was only thirty years old when she took sick, a boiling hot day, standing there in her back kitchen, making a Malvern pudding for her husband’s supper.
Summary: [from back cover] From her calamitous birth in Manitoba in 1905 to her journey with her father to Indiana, throughout her years as a wife, mother, and widow, Daisy Stone Goodwill has struggled to understand her place in the world. Now she listens, she observes, and through sheer force of imagination, she becomes a witness to her own life: her birth, her death, and the troubling misconnections she discovers in between.
How I found the book: It was assigned reading in 11th grade. I loved it. Re-read it to learn more about Canadian literature.
Opinion: Loved it then, love it now. The narrative is deceptively linear. The chapter titles would indicated that the story is moving in chronological order but as you read, the development of the plot and characters becomes increasingly serpentine.
The idea of memory and records is a consistent motif. As such, memories of the past and projections of the future come together to create the complete picture. That picture is not, however, “accurate.” The narrator does not pretend to give an provide an objective account. Sheild’s uses varying perspectives to give the protagonist’s perception of her life. Even though it is a fictional autobiography, it is not always in the first person. One chapter is made up entirely of letters (notably letters received by the protagonist, not those sent by her). Another chapter is written in the perspective of others. Some parts (such as the chapter about her birth) include information the narrator has no way of knowing.
At the end, the reader is left with more questions than answers about Daisy Goodwill.
Recommend: Yes!
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