Sharyl reviewed The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
Review of 'The Stone Diaries' on 'Goodreads'
The Stone Diaries, by Carol Shields, is another one of those beautiful roses that I would not have appreciated at an earlier age. (According to Amazon, this book is frequently purchased with my last read. That's almost scary.)
This is the fictional autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett, a woman whose life spanned almost a century. Daisy knew absolutely nothing about Mercy Goodwill, her mother, who died giving birth to her in 1905, and never really bonded with her father, who did not raise her during her early childhood. She was born in Tyndall, Manitoba, but raised in Winnipeg by Clarentine, a middle-aged woman who had befriended her mother. Unfortunately, Clarentine met an untimely death when Daisy is eleven, and that is when she joined her father, Cuyler Goodwill, in Indiana. Got that? Daisy was repotted many times in her life. She was widowed twice, became enthralled with a career as …
The Stone Diaries, by Carol Shields, is another one of those beautiful roses that I would not have appreciated at an earlier age. (According to Amazon, this book is frequently purchased with my last read. That's almost scary.)
This is the fictional autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett, a woman whose life spanned almost a century. Daisy knew absolutely nothing about Mercy Goodwill, her mother, who died giving birth to her in 1905, and never really bonded with her father, who did not raise her during her early childhood. She was born in Tyndall, Manitoba, but raised in Winnipeg by Clarentine, a middle-aged woman who had befriended her mother. Unfortunately, Clarentine met an untimely death when Daisy is eleven, and that is when she joined her father, Cuyler Goodwill, in Indiana. Got that? Daisy was repotted many times in her life. She was widowed twice, became enthralled with a career as a columnist at a local newspaper, where she was known as Mrs. Greenthumb, suffered a nervous breakdown when this career ended, but eventually recovered and then struggled to make sense of who she was and what her life was about.
Daisy Goodwill Flett's life was certainly not unusual or interesting, but Carol Shields allows us to see her from all sides, from different points of view, and explores what a life story is, exactly--is it what others remember about Daisy, what Daisy herself remembered and believed, or is her story the sum of the documented facts about her? I found this book tragic because she is so all alone most of her life, especially at the end, when she cannot make herself understood and is left with her memories. Her children are puzzled as to why she would leave this possession or that to them, and when they encountered facts they did not know about, they misinterpreted them. Surely, Daisy's last life, in a retirement home in Florida, must have been unrecognizable to her. At this point, her children and grandchildren were geographically spread far and wide, and Grandma Flett became an idea, an abstraction. In the end, her children even chose the wrong flower for her funeral.
When I read obituaries of women who were born eighty or more years ago, I'll wonder all the more what exactly happened between bridge club, gardening, and cooking. Is that all there was? The Stone Diaries is a fascinating novel that will stay in my mind for awhile. (
