The "Petrified Logs" is what we descriptively call "a little book".

At times, I felt that if the Stoner of John Williams had been born a woman, she would have been named Daisy Goodwill. For all those who loved the hero of Williams, it is impossible not to be accompanied by the artistically crafted character of Daisy, her wealth, delicacy, and the sensitivity of Shields' writing, the journey of the heroine full of reversals and turnarounds, who endures life with stoicism. The work was honored with the Pulitzer Prize in 1995.

This novel takes readers on a captivating adventure through the life of Daisy Goodwill. Her story is one of struggle, growth, and self-discovery. We witness her as she faces various challenges and overcomes them with grace and determination. The detailed descriptions and vivid imagery bring the characters and settings to life, making it easy for the reader to immerse themselves in the world of the novel.

Overall, "The Stone Diaries" is a beautifully written and engaging work that offers a profound exploration of the human condition. It is a must-read for anyone who enjoys literary fiction and wants to be transported to another time and place.

The Stone Diaries is a captivating account of an ordinary woman's life journey.

Born in 1905, Daisy Stone Goodwill transitions through various roles - from a child to a wife, widow, and mother, and finally into her golden years.

Confused by her inability to fathom her place in life, Daisy endeavors to tell her story within a novel that explores the limitations of autobiography.

Her life is filled with vivid incidents, yet she experiences a sense of powerlessness.

She listens, observes, and through the strength of her imagination, becomes a witness to her own life - from birth to death and the disturbing misconnections in between.

Daisy's struggle to find her place in life serves as a paradigm for the unsettled decades of our era.

It took me two attempts over the years to read this novel. Once I overcame the initial 50 pages, I couldn't put it down.

I adored this novel, but I'm not certain it's suitable for every reader.

Some may find its slow pace and introspective nature challenging, while others will be deeply moved by Daisy's story and the profound themes it explores.

Nevertheless, it's a remarkable work of literature that offers a unique perspective on life, love, and the human condition.

Vincitore del premio Pulitzer nel 1995, questo libro racconta la storia di Daisy Goodwill sotto forma di biografia, scritta dalla figlia. Daisy è una donna ordinaria, ma la sua vita è segnata fin da subito dalla morte della madre in conseguenza del parto. Vita e morte si intrecciano continuamente nella sua storia. Lei non si sente mai appagata perché vive col fantasma dell'abbandono.

Sposarsi equivale per lei a perdere - prima o poi - il marito. Mettere al mondo dei figli equivale - prima o poi - a lasciarli andare. Avere un lavoro equivale - prima o poi - a essere licenziata. È tutto una perdita per Daisy, un lutto che deve affrontare continuamente.

Sebbene ci siano anche dei momenti più leggeri, più spensierati, questo spettro rimane sempre con lei. E noi che leggiamo lo percepiamo tutto. La vita di Daisy è la vita ordinaria di una donna (stra)ordinaria che ha affrontato la morte appena è nata.

The Millions website honors the end of the year by posting articles written by renowned writers, sharing their reading experiences over the past twelve months. One of my favorite posts this year is by Julie Buntin, and I'll link it here. Buntin first mentions reading The Stone Diaries. This is a book that I consider a "favorite," but unfortunately, I don't remember much of it. So, as a tribute to outstanding women writers and to see if I still view this novel as one of the best, here we are again.

Daisy Stone's minor pains and disappointments, as well as her greater heartbreaks, now resonate with me as I've grown older. I understand the significance of the passing years. I see how aging makes us more tender, yet we care less about the unimportant. Shields' writing is extremely precise. She creates a unique landscape and places us right in the middle, allowing us to witness Daisy's life from birth to the end. Was this novel unjustly criticized as being "about nothing" when it was written? If so, those judges should be ashamed. The lives detailed in the novel are truly worth reading about.

I first read this book in 1993. It was so long ago that I initially thought I shouldn't include it on my list. However, Carol Shields has been one of my long-time favorite writers, and I truly loved The Stone Diaries. I would like to read it again sometime in the future.

Read thirty (!) years ago, it still lingers vividly in my heart if not precisely in my mind. This quote from my commonplace book neatly encapsulates the allure and, simultaneously, the limitations of the work for me.

It has always been a challenge for me to fathom the erasure of time. While others seem to effortlessly embrace the ebb and flow of seasons or the conscious acknowledgement that one year has concluded and another has commenced. There is an essence here that speaks volumes about our fundamental helplessness and how the greater fabric of our lives is intertwined with waste and obscurity. How can such an expanse of time hold so little? How can it be snatched away from us? Months, weeks, days, hours mislaid – and the most precious time of life, too, when our bodies are at their peak strength and receptive, as they never will be again, to the onslaught of sensation.

The term "limitation" when applied to this book simply denotes the recognition that it is very much a read tailored for older individuals and/or those whose lives have been scarred by grief and loss on magnitudes beyond the ordinary. Within those boundaries, Daisy proves to be a fine companion and a skillful storyteller, albeit perhaps with a somewhat less than universal appeal. Her acceptance of things can at times seem passive, as if she is willingly cast in the role of the victim in her own narrative. However, ultimately, after three more decades of my own life have passed, I now perceive this as her strength, her water-like inability to be compressed, manifesting itself.

A truly excellent read indeed. Highly recommended, most especially to men who are married to women.

A rather ordinary and typical novel that meticulously describes the life of a woman named Daisy Flett.

To be sure, when it comes to the sentence structure and construction, it is quite excellent. However, I don't have the sense that Shields manages to elevate her concept beyond the inherent simplicity within her story.

This novel is suitable for those individuals who have an affinity for the comforting writing style of Ann Beattie or Anne Tylor. But for those who prefer to witness storytelling and language being pushed to greater heights and explored more deeply, this may not be the ideal choice.

It offers a certain charm and familiarity, yet it lacks the kind of innovation and depth that would truly captivate a more discerning reader.

Overall, while it has its merits, it doesn't quite reach the level that would make it stand out among more ambitious works of fiction.

This was my very first encounter with Carol Shields' work, and I can firmly say it won't be my last. Despite the fact that I would probably rank this particular piece at the bottom of my 4-star reads or perhaps even at the top of 3-star if I were feeling rather stingy. I didn't find the story or the characters to be especially enjoyable. However, the presentation was truly fascinating. Shields employed a diverse range of methods to tell the story - different first person narratives, third person narratives, letters, and a combination of newspaper articles. Some of the passages she wrote, I found myself reading several times.

His voice is beautiful. Its texture is like fine-woven wool. If it had a color, it would be a warm chestnut. In tone, in fluidity, in resonance, it is everything that a man's voice should be, with just that hint of a Scottish burr, thinner than the skin of varnish on his oak lectern, giving it the necessary hardness. He rides straight up the walls of his sentences. His little pauses are sensuous gateways, without which his listeners would fall into a trance.

If I were still young, I'd be constantly searching for that fellow. And I'd keep on searching, and searching, and searching...

And then this particular paragraph caught my attention as I continue to spend several hours each month delving into family history.

When we think of the past, we tend to assume that people were simpler in their functions and shaped by forces that were primary and irreducible. We take for granted that our forebears were imbued with a deeper purity of purpose than we possess nowadays, and a more singular set of mind. We believe, for example, that early scientists pursued their goals with unbroken "dedication" and that artists worked in the flame of some perpetual "inspiration." But none of this is true. Those who came before us were just as wayward, unaccountable, and unsteady in their longings as people are today.

I'm not entirely sure what the Pulitzer Committee saw that I didn't, but I'm still glad to have read this.

I know this won't win me any friends among Canadian readers, but I don't like Carol Shields' writing. Granted, I've only read this one through to the end. A few years ago, I started another one and didn't like it either, so I quit about a quarter of the way in. I suspected at the time that I was not a "good" reader and that her books were over my head.

Since then, I've gained some "reader confidence" and learned that it's okay to not like certain styles of writing just on the basis of personal taste. Hence the freedom I feel to hate Ulysses by James Joyce without guilt, but that's a whole other story.

This novel follows the life of Daisy Goodwill from her birth in her mother's kitchen in 1905 to her death in the 1990s. It wasn't an ordinary life, if there even is such a thing. She never knew the mother who died bringing her into the world. She was raised by a neighbour until circumstances changed, requiring Daisy to go home and live with her father. At that point, she is eleven years old and she and her father are complete strangers to one another. Each chapter is titled for a specific stage of her life: Birth, Childhood, Marriage, Love, Motherhood, Work, Sorrow, Ease, Illness and Decline, and Death.

I found the gaps too long between some of the chapters. For example, the "Childhood" chapter ends in 1916, just as she reconnects with her father, then that chapter comes to an end and the next one "Marriage" begins with her as a bride-to-be at 22 years of age. I think gaps like that are what prevented me from arriving at a place where I would care about the characters and how things would turn out for them. The story itself is good and the writing as well, I just couldn't get invested in any of the people in the story.

I also found some rather odd figures of speech in this book. They're in the right places and at the right times; my problem is that I don't understand them. There must have been fifty times throughout the book that I came to a metaphor and stopped, wondering what the heck did that mean. I love creativity, but I think this author and I are on different wavelengths. I'll give you a few examples:

1. In talking about a professor she said "He rides straight up the walls of his sentences."

2. "For Abram Skutari......religion is an open window as well as the curtain with which he darkens the window."

3. "...the word 'woe' made them fall over laughing, such a blind little bug of a word."

4. "...if she says 'So you two gals are out on the town, huh?' then aunt Daisy will say, shaping her mouth into soft ovals of confederacy...."

5. "Vanity refuses to die, pushing the blandness of everyday life into little pleats, pockets, knobs of electric candy."

I could think through some of these and figure out what she might have meant, (the word "woe" is bug-like though I don't know how it's blind, and maybe I have some idea what "a soft oval of confederacy" looks like) but I can't come up with any connection between "the blandness of every day life" and "electric candy" (electric candy?). As something that should paint a clearer picture for the reader or help us understand a situation more easily, these metaphors and others in this book didn't work for me.

I don't know if I'll read anymore of Carol Shields' books or not. I think I'd like to try one more, but it's way down on my priority list now. I know that a lot of people love her writing so definitely give it a try. I didn't "get" her at all, but you might not have that problem. Would love to hear what you think.

Ugh, my relationship with this one is a love/hate affair.

I read it for an English course in college where all the required novels were Pulitzer Prize winners from the 90s. Once again, I had a sadistic teacher who compiled a list of the most depressing books that won in the 90s: The Hours, Mambo Kings, Rabbit at Rest, and so on. Admittedly, most of the winners in the 90s were works filled with depressive themes, but he could still have included a more uplifting choice in there.

Basically, when this book was combined with all the others, it was extremely depressing. So I hated this book. I still think I hate it, yet I truly appreciate what she was attempting to do (and achieved) with the novel. However, it still depresses me. That's why I gave it 2 stars instead of 1.

Within that context, you might find that you love this book. But really, the way she wrote it makes it tiresome to read, although I think that's the whole point as it's an account of the life of an ordinary, common woman.

Actually, I really should have liked this book. I love books soaked in existential themes. But all I can recall is how difficult this book was to get through.

A breathtaking and thoroughly original novel that leaves me completely in awe. The choices Shields made in shaping this narrative are truly remarkable. The whole story is flawlessly cohesive, and each part is like a piece of poetry unto itself.

Essentially, this book delves deep into the theme of loneliness, exploring every kind of it: starved, suffocating, denied, cherished, physical, existential, or simply the result of petty misunderstanding. What's more, it's not always clear cut. Shields allows for ambiguity, giving the reader the freedom to have a subjective response, whatever that might be. And then, with a gentle touch, she guides you to a different vantage point that you hadn't considered before.

The body is discussed throughout the novel, through birth, sex, illness, and death, graphically yet with such grace, such reverence, and such heartbreaking candor that it becomes truly beautiful.

This novel has struck me to the core. I love it so much that I don't even want to know what others have said about it!

This is a rather unique family saga. There was this man who got married to a woman who was really overweight. Sadly, she passed away, and while I knew I was supposed to feel sad, it was a strange kind of emotion. The book mainly focuses on their child. The child gets adopted and grows up. Along the way, more people die and get married. She also gets married, and wouldn't you believe it, her husband dies. It was kind of funny in a strange way, especially because he was a jerk, so she was actually better off without him. Then, there was a situation similar to a Woody Allen movie where she had a relationship that was a bit unconventional. In today's times, child services would probably have been involved, but back then, the rules were different. Just look at Jerry Lee Lewis. Anyway, she and the man she was with had some kids, and as everyone grew up, more people died. One of her friends had a reputation for being with a lot of guys, which I remember clearly. People in this story get divorced quite often. She writes about flowers for a local newspaper for years. When she gets fired, she feels so angry that she wants to shoot the editor, but she doesn't, which was a bit disappointing. I'm not a supporter of gun violence at all, but this story could really have used something more exciting like a plane crash or a family massacre to keep the reader's interest. Or maybe someone doing something really unexpected. I know some people might think that instead of reading "The Stone Diaries," I should have been watching movies like "Tokyo Gore Police" or "House of 1000 Corpses." Well, I guess they might have a point there.

Overall, I gave this book 4 stars, but rounded it down to 3 because the last 3 sections were really uninteresting, just like a brand new vacuum cleaner that sucks up all the excitement.

This book won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995, and it was an honor well deserved. I had never even heard of it before. I simply picked it up at the Goodwill because the description on the back cover intrigued me. However, once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down.

The story is a fictionalized autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett. Born around the turn of the 20th century and living until the 1980s, Shield's Flett reflects simultaneously on her own tragic life and the life of a North American century. The mix and overlap between these two subjects is truly fascinating. Shields' writing is of the first rate, making this book a pleasure to read.

Although it is written as if it's an autobiography, The Stone Diaries does not limit itself to the subject matter that its protagonist could have known. Starting on the day of Daisy's birth, with her mother, Mercy, and moving both backward and forward through time, the book gives perspectives and experiences of many of the supporting characters as well. These include Daisy's father, the woman who raises her, her husband, and her children.

Though the speaker is sometimes not clearly identified, the moves between perspectives are far less confusing than one might expect. (Don't worry, it doesn't read like As I Lay Dying or anything like that.) The story is actually told in a way that I don't think I've ever seen before, with a mix of omniscient and present narration, and constantly moving time and perspective. Shields deserves her award just for being able to pull that off successfully, never mind the story itself!

But the story is indeed compelling. Daisy's life is hard and full of tragedy, such as the childbearing death of her mother and twice widowhood. However, the tragedy takes a backseat to both Daisy's and the other characters' knack for reinventing themselves when circumstances change. Both as a human story and as a parable for the countries in which the novel takes place (the U.S. and Canada), these reinventions work very well.

I was so impressed by this book that I passed it on to my mother, and I will be on the lookout for more of Carol Shields' work. I would definitely recommend it.