Summer Reads...

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields- 4 stars ****

This book is written as though it is someone's autobiography, although it is a work of fiction. The author has paid immaculate attention to detail, including a family tree, photographs, obituaries, newspaper cuttings and letters of correspondance within it, making the piece feel like a true story of the life of Daisy Goodwill-Flett, the main character. It begins with Mercy Stone giving birth to Daisy on the kitchen floor of her home in Manitoba, a province of Canada. The plotline spans from 1905, for approximately ninety years (the reader is only ever told that Daisy died in the nineties) and follows her through childhood, two marriages, three children, their childhoods, her first job, a bout of depression, old age and eventually, death.

As it is over such a long period of time and everything is seen through Daisys' eyes, the reader really gets an insight into the workings of her head and her perception of the world. Despite it being in the style of a diary, the language used is more poetic than I would imagine occurs in such things, so it becomes storylike to read, as opposed to just leafing though someone's journal. An example is when Daisy tells of her children's reaction to their cousin Beverly: 'They shudder with the heat of their own dramas, awestruck by the doubleness of memory, the hold it has on them, as mysterious as telephone wires or the halo around the head of the baby Jesus. Memory could be poked with a stick, savoured in the mouth like a popsicle, you could never get enough of it.'

This is a story that I could imagine flourishing if it were ever to be made into a film, because throughout it, there are examples of other people's thoughts and opinions on events that Daisy describes. This creates an image in my mind of each person stood in front of a camera being interviewed on the topic that they speak of. An example is when Daisy gets married for the second time, to a man much older than herself;
'The Minister of Agriculture exclaimed to his wife upon reading the marriage announcement in the newspaper: "Good God, Flett's got himself married. And I always thought the bloke was queer as a bent kipper."...
Fraidy Hoyt said (to herself): "She's lost her head, not her heart. I thought she had more sense. A young wife, an old husband - a prescription for disaster, if you believe in the wisdom of folktales."'

The inclusion of random interjections such as these make the piece more three dimensional and realistic, so that the reader knows the plot is actually happening, and is not just some distorted version in Daisy's head.

One thing I particularly enjoyed about this novel was the time period in which it is set. I know very little about the background of the era, especially seen as it takes place in Canada and America, and I found it very interesting to read about the customs and traditions of a time past. It was especially good to see how things changed over the years, it becoming more and more like the world I know as I read further through it.

The Stone Diaries was written in 1993 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995, a prestigious American award for fiction. I would recommend it to anyone who fancies an insight into a life that is different to the usual read by students these days... basically nothing to do with vampires and werewolves!