Novel
The Stone Diaries
Carol Shields · 1993
Synopsis
Daisy Goodwill is born in Manitoba in 1905; her mother, who did not know she was pregnant, dies giving birth to her. Raised in Winnipeg by a neighbour, she joins at the age of eleven her father, a stonemason who has grown rich in the quarries of Indiana. Widowed during her honeymoon, she remarries in Ottawa, brings up three children, for a time writes a gardening column, and then grows old in Florida. The book presents itself as her autobiography, but the voice shifts without warning from I to she.
Context
Published in Toronto by Random House of Canada and in London by Fourth Estate in 1993, then in New York by Viking in 1994, the novel proceeds in ten dated chapters. It takes seriously an existence that nothing distinguishes and asks what the story of a life is. Born in the United States and naturalised Canadian, its author held dual nationality, and the book was crowned on both sides of the border.
Who it is for
A novel of about three hundred and sixty pages, in ten chapters that follow the ages of a life; the shift in narrative voice is surprising, and deliberate.
Prizes and reception
Governor General's Award 1993, Booker finalist the same year, National Book Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize in 1995.
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