[ book tip by Ann Morgan ] With many people living well into their nineties and the world changing ever faster, it is possible to pack any number of stories into a single life. Such is the premise from which Canadian author Carol Shields starts with her award-winning novel The Stone Diaries. 

Shields’ heroine is Daisy Goodwill, an ostensibly unremarkable heroine tumbled into the world in 1905 when her obese mother unexpectedly goes into labour and then dies. So begins an epic journey for Daisy as she picks her way across the decades of the twentieth century, shaped both by history and by the specific challenges and people she encounters. Characters and themes are woven richly through the narrative, returning repeatedly in slightly altered forms, so that by the time of Daisy’s death some ninety years after her birth, the reader has a powerful impression of the richness and fullness of human life.   

Shields’ talent has always been the reflection of general truths through the prism of specific events and The Stone Diaries is a prime example of this. To read this book is to feel privileged to view the gamut of human experience through a single, powerful lens. It richly deserves its Pulitzer Prize.

[ book info ] Shields, Carol: The Stone Diaries. (Book language: English) 4th Estate, ISBN: 1857022254.