#BlogTourReview: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

It is more than a pleasure to be taking my turn on the blog tour for The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields. I first encountered this wonderful author when I read Larry’s Party many years ago. Carol Shield was a writer of impeccable timing and insight; some one who could get to the heart of the human condition and bring the magic of life to a wide audience. She was particularly skilled in her portrayal of women. She saw the joy in the everyday and brought those stories to life.

The Stone Diaries, first published in 1993, and now reissued by World Editions is widely regarded as Shield’s masterpiece. It’s reissued coincides with the launch of the first Carol Shields Prize, created to honour women in literature.

The Stone Diaries is the story of one women’s life through out the Twentieth Century. Spanning major historical events and travelling between Canada and America, with a little bit of the Orkneys thrown in, the novel concentrates on the life and evolution of Daisy Goodwill Fleet. From her unexpected and eventful birth, through to her death we follow Daisy, through each era, incarnation and event.

The sense of perspective within the novel is unusual and ever changing. Shields seems to both acknowledge, play with and disparage the notion that a life is seen and judged through many windows, often not those best informed. Any perception or judgement of an individual is tainted by our own views or preconceived ideas; and as such how close do we get to knowing the truth of some and their life.

Daisy’s story appears symbolic of many women of the past twenty years. At times she seems in control of her own destiny, at others very much trapped and defined by the role she finds herself in. As a daughter, mother, wife, it seems that society has a place for Daisy. But who is the real Daisy Goodwin Fleet?

With her usually eye for detail, Shields builds up layer upon layer of information and insight. Some seems domestic, easily dismissed as trivial, but it is this pinpoint accuracy that gives the novels it’s depth of perception and marks Shields out as a compassionate and empathetic mouth piece for Daisy and hundreds of women like her.

Beginning with Daisy’s stone mason father, who is devoted to the memory of his wife, devastated by her loss, the motif of lasting memorials runs throughout the book. How do we choose to spend our lives with someone? How do we evaluate and express their worth? And what testaments do we raise to them after they have gone? Shields poses all these questions and more, pushing at the edges of the readers responses for answers, showing us how one person, one life lived can be so different in each different interaction and at different times of their lives. Shields quietly and insightfully questions the markers we use to evaluate a life and questions whether we can ever truly know someone entirely.

This is a novel that begins in both birth and death, and comes full circle. It is a novel that challenges us to look for the extraordinary in ordinary and reevaluate what we might find there. It deserves every accolade and truly is a modern classic.

Rachel x

And there is more…

For more reviews and responses to this book, please check out the rest of the blog tour, listed below…