The Stone Diaries (1993)

Why this one?

Shields was the third winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction (then the Orange Prize) in 1998, for the highly likeable and intriguing Larry’s Party. A few years earlier, she had missed out on the 1993 Booker with The Stone Diaries, in a year that Roddy Doyle took home the Prize with the (to my mind) somewhat underwhelming Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. In 1995, it won her the Pulitzer Prize (possible due to her dual Canadian/US citizenship). This is perhaps Shields’ best-known novel, and was recommended to me more than once in the course of my Prize-related writings.

Thoughts, etc.

The Stone Diaries is an epic covering the life of one woman, Daisy Goodwill Flett, over the course of almost the entire twentieth century. Beginning with her birth in 1905, during which her mother dies, it catches up with Daisy at regular(ish) intervals through the century, covering her early life raised by her aunt Clarentine, her early marriage to the alcoholic Harold Hoad, a second marriage to a much older man (previously her ward, Barker Flett), parenthood and gradual decline through to her death in Florida in her nineties.

The novel is very clearly interested in Daisy’s role as an “ordinary” woman, of the kind that would rarely be afforded this kind of grand biography. The historical sweep allows Shields to look at the development of the role of women across the century, with Daisy standing in for generations of women who have accepted a domestic role in life, sacrificing career and ambition (and perhaps more importantly, personal fulfillment) in order to support the lives of partners and children. The gaps in the narrative seemingly deliberately allow crucial moments in Daisy’s development to be skipped, most notably her college years in which she is clearly academically highly capable and would point towards a very different life journey for her.

Instead we see her passed around between the care of various guardians (seemingly at their own convenience) and then a succession of disappointing men (including Barker, who we first encounter lusting after an under-aged Daisy who he is supposed to be caring for). Later in life she enjoys a brief period of fulfillment as a local newspaper columnist on gardening, but even here she takes over from the deceased Barker and is named only as a “Mrs” version of her husband’s pen name, before being disposed of at a point when the men at the newspaper no longer required her. It’s after this point that it begins to dawn on her that she has had little agency in her own life, and she sinks into depression for a while before realising (domestic) responsibilities have to be resumed. For the vast majority of the novel she is not the narrator of her own story, fittingly, and only towards the end of her life to we begin to get serious glimpses of her interior life.

Many reviews of the subsequent Larry’s Party talked of her “turning her attention” to men, and while Larry is certainly a more rounded male character than those in here, it’s hard to argue that she doesn’t cover similar themes here. Like Larry and his mazes, virtually all of the men in The Stone Diaries have life-consuming obsessions, from Daisy’s father Cuyler’s intricate stone sculptures, Barker’s obsessive flower-collecting (later proven to be of interest to nobody but himself) and the more tragic alcoholism of Harold Hoad. The point is obvious, though never heavy-handedly made: the men in the novel are able to dedicate large chunks of their time to these self-serving obsessions while the likes of Daisy are obliged by convention and necessity to sacrifice their own interests in order to look after the children and men-children around them.

It’s a really powerful novel, similarly engaging to Larry’s Party but with an even grander historical sweep. Unlike many other century-spanning life stories, it doesn’t dwell on the historical context, focusing instead on the largely unchanging nature of an ultimately unfulfilled character like Daisy. A very worthy Pulitzer winner, it’s a shame it didn’t take the Booker as for me it’s a far superior novel to Doyle’s 1993 winner.

Shields in ‘95

Score

9

Very much a recommended read, slightly better even than the also excellent Larry’s Party.

Next up

Back to the Women’s Prize winners with 2000’s When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant.