I really couldn't get into this book. I didn't like the prose and just was bored by it.

The writing was beautiful and insightful. I found many, many thought provoking moments in this book, and it provided for good book club discussion. However, none of us really enjoyed reading the book. The trajectory of the story was very flat, just following a normal woman through a pretty normal life. Definitely not a page turner.

Sometimes I think prize-winning books are overrated and this novel doesn't alter that opinion. The Stone Diaries follows the life of one woman, Daisy Goodwill, from before her birth to her death. It does so through some varied and occasionally odd narrative technique. At times, the narrator is Daisy Goodwill herself. In other places, members of her family and friends speak to the reader or history unfolds through letters, newspaper clippings and other written documents. Early in the book I found the narration jarring and distancing from the main characters. Later I felt more emotionally involved but there were times that I was pressed to keep reading.
The title of the book seems to illustrate one central theme, that of stone as metaphor for life. The men in the first half of the book are quarry workers and Daisy's mother, a foundling, is given the last name Stone at the orphanage where she is raised. Near death, Daisy even imagines herself turned to stone. For much of the second half of the novel, stone is abandoned for plants and flowers, perhaps a riff on the name Daisy as names are important in this novel. The last paragraph of the novel is a discussion of what flowers should have been chosen for Daisy's funeral.
I gave the novel three stars not two, even though I was bored of it at times, because it seemed to pick up in the second half and because there is some undoubtedly beautiful language. The author writes of Daisy's father's religious conversion: "He had thought himself alone in the world, but in fact he is a child of this solid staring rainbow, and of the persevering forms of light and shadow, of substance and ephemera. A child of the earth." Later in the novel, Shields eloquently describes Daisy's depression: "Now, at the age of fifty-nine, sadness flows through every cell of her body, yet leaves her curiously untouched. She knows how memory gets smoothed down with time, everything flattened by the iron of acceptance and rejection. . . ." Writing like this gives the novel moments of greatness but not enough for a Pulitzer, in my humble opinion.

Ordinary Lives as Extraordinary!

“Things begin, things end. There is no middle, only the edge.”

“A life is full of isolated moments of joy, disappointment, grief, and wonder that only take on meaning when strung together as a narrative.”

“Everyone is the hero of their own life story, but it takes someone else to write it down.”

Oof I really didn’t enjoy this. The book tells the tale of Daisy Goodwill’s life. Every chapter is a segment of her life. The plot is an ordinary woman’s life. There is little to no story or other elements. It is repetitive, boring, ordinary, and the writing is flowery and excessive.

I'd never heard a word about this book despite it winning the Pulitzer in the mid-90s.

It was on James Mustich's list, and I hadn't read one of those titles in a moment, so I gave it a go.

The first chapter is so off-putting in its description of Mercy Goodwill I nearly gave up. But I didn't, and I'm glad I stuck with it because this is a wonderful piece of fiction. It's episodic in that it describes the course of one woman's life but includes her fore-bearers and descendants. At its core, this is an engaging book about a woman who lead a dull life. If you enjoy gardening (I do, with mixed results), you will like all the wonderful descriptions of flowers in this book. Gardening is a big theme, as is stonework.

There's a recollection by the main character at the end of her life that is more stream of consciousness than anything else and listed is every house she ever lived in. That passage reminded me so much of my grandmother. I digitized all of our family photos years ago and stacked in a box I found a sheath of photos, all of houses. Not children or family in front of houses, merely the houses themselves. On the back, the address was rarely written but the photos were numbered. Every house she'd ever lived in. My mom told me once that they'd moved 18 times over the course of her childhood because my grandfather liked to save money by buying and selling property and carrying the title for the new owner. What did my grandmother think about moving that often? Did her opinion carry much weight? Just another photograph in a box.