Stouner

by John Williams, John Williams

349 pages

Russian language

Published Nov. 8, 2015 by AST: CORPUS, M.

ISBN:: 978-5-17-090823-3
OCLC Number:: 914510370

(85 reviews)

William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.

John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward …

43 editions

Lynn reviewed Stoner by John Williams

Review of 'Stoner' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I can understand the people who quit halfway through this book and then complain about how it's overrated. I kept going to the end, though, and I'm glad I read it. I don't know how to explain why. It was like living someone's life through, and being reminded by doing that all lives are to some extent meaningless, that contentment washes out regrets, and that it all ends. I can't possibly explain why that was good, but it was.

markm reviewed Stoner by John Williams

Review of 'Stoner' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A Dreiser-like panorama of tsouris, life sucks and then you die. The satisfaction comes from how well it is written and from observing the principle character stand amid hostile Society like Jimmy Stewart.