Carol Shields’s majestic The
Stone Diaries combines several features of excellent fiction: its events
unfold in a rending emotional palette because of heroine Daisy’s sympathetic
nature; its secondary characters ring true to life (even if sometimes eccentric
or even bizarre); it uses multiple symbolic foci which balance each other
superbly; and engages us with intriguing shifts in point of view.
But wait, there’s more! Stone
Diaries makes unique use of a first-person narrative: there are stretches
completely outside Daisy’s awareness, which she could have only learned of
second hand, but then Daisy’s voice reasserts itself and focuses on Topic A –
Daisy’s life. This now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t quality simulates life, or
simulates our awareness of our lives. Ms. Shields does this brilliantly, it
will captivate you. I was plunged into the protagonist’s consciousness, and out
of it, in a way I had never experienced. And certain parts of this narrative
are handled obliquely; written correspondence exhibited chronologically, brings
to light a sudden change in Daisy’s life, which ends in a severe bout of
depression. The whole works seamlessly – you don’t notice any abruptness or
arbitrariness in these changes.
The Stone Diaries tells
the life of Daisy Goodwill Flett, orphaned in a tiny Manitoba hamlet at the
moment of her birth, unofficially adopted by a kindly neighbor lady, whose son
eventually becomes her husband and the father of her three children. The home
towns of her childhood depend on quarries and stonecutting for their existence,
and Daisy’s father Culyer Goodwill has skills in that area. In fact, so
extensive are his skills that he builds a monument to his dead wife out of a
series of stones that he cuts, and this monument grows
so large that it becomes
a tourist destination. He follows this project with a plan to build in his Indiana
back yard a miniature model of an Egyptian pyramid, using hundreds of thousands
of cut stones. Balance this against Daisy and her husband Barker. Barker, a
botanist, has assembled a respectable collection – 23 species of lady’s
slippers – but his work takes him into the more prosaic work of hybrid grains
and the upper reaches of government service in Canada. Daisy seems dull and
unambitious, and her quotidian life is sometimes the despair of her friends.
However, she does succeed brilliantly with her garden, and makes it work with
the deep understanding of a professional, even a scientist.
Obviously these thematic tropes challenge us to find the
deeper, more hidden paths to meaning and intent, and they add greatly to my
enjoyment. However, Stone Diaries is
a highly enjoyable read just for its sumptuous, elegant prose, and for its
worldly wise humor. The author’s craft vaults her to the head of the class – no
20th century novel has a lovelier cadence or appeals to the ear more
profoundly or pleasingly.
The Stone Diaries won
the 1993 Governor General’s Award for English language fiction in Canada and
the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Shields was born in Illinois and was a
naturalized Canadian citizen, so she was eligible for both. It’s lucky for the
panels that anoint our best literary fiction, because the book deserves these
and any other awards that might be available. Important enough to be iconic,
enjoyable, balanced, intriguing.
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