The Stone Diaries : Pulitzer Prize Winner (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

The Stone Diaries is one ordinary woman's story of her journey through life. Born in 1905, Daisy Stone Goodwill drifts through the roles of child, wife, widow, and mother, and finally into her old age. Bewildered by her inability to understand her place in her own life, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography. Her life is vivid with incidents, and yet she feels a sense of powerlessness. She listens, she observes, and through sheer force of imagination, she becomes a witness of her own life: her birth, her death, and the troubling misconnections she discovers between. Daisy's struggle to find a place for herself in her own life is a paradigm of the unsettled decades of our era."Shields, who began as a miniaturist, has come full bloom with this latest exploration of domestic plenitude and paucity; she's entered a mature, luminous period, devising a style that develops an earlier whimsical fabulism into a hard-edged lyricism perfect for the ambitious bicultural exploration she undertakes here." - Kirkus ReviewsCarol Shields was born in the United States and holds dual citizenship here and in Canada. Her previous books include The Orange Fish, Swann, Various Miracles, and The Republic of Love. Her newest novel, The Stone Diaries, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and received Canada's prestigious Governor's General Award.

in Celebration Of The Fifteenth Anniversary Of Its Original Publication, Carol Shields's Pulitzer Prize—winning Novel Is Now Available In A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition

one Of The Most Successful And Acclaimed Novels Of Our Time, This Fictionalized Autobiography Of Daisy Goodwill Flett Is A Subtle But Affecting Portrait Of An Everywoman Reflecting On An Unconventional Life. What Transforms This Seemingly Ordinary Tale Is The Richness Of Daisy's Vividly Described Inner Life—from Her Earliest Memories Of Her Adoptive Mother To Her Awareness Of Impending Death.

publishers Weekly

any Performer Has Her Work Cut Out For Her When A Novel Takes Place In Several Settings With Inhabitants Possessing Distinctive Regional Accents. Shield's Pulitzer Prize-winning Novel Takes The Listener From The Plains Of Central Canada To Bloomington, Ind., And The Orkney Islands. Botsford Is An Excellent Performer With A Smooth And Easy-to-listen-to Reading Voice, But She Doesn't Have A Gift For Imitating Linguistic Variations. The Women Of Daisy's Bloomington Circle Have Southern Lilts Worthy Of Gone With The Wind. Readers Would Expect The Voices Of This Coterie To Age As Daisy Does, But No Accommodation Is Made For This Possibility. Within Each Locale The Voices Are Quite Distinct, Though The Voice Of Daisy, The Center Of The Novel, Stands Out Least Of All, Appropriately Enough, For In This Work We See Her Life Through The Eyes Of Others. This Is An Important And Deft Novel And It's About Time That It Was Recorded, Even In This Overly Abridged Version. Shields's Writing Still Makes This Worth A Listen. Available As A Penguin Paperback. (oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

In celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of its original publication, Carol Shields's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is now available in a Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition One of the most successful and acclaimed novels of our time, this fictionalized autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett is a subtle but affecting portrait of an everywoman reflecting on an unconventional life. What transforms this seemingly ordinary tale is the richness of Daisy's vividly described inner life--from her earliest memories of her adoptive mother to her awareness of impending death.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. In celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of its original publication, Carol Shields's Pulitzer Prize winning novel is now available in a Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition. One of the most successful and acclaimed novels of our time, this fictionalized autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett is a subtle but affecting portrait of an everywoman reflecting on an unconventional life. What transforms this seemingly ordinary tale is the richness of Daisy's vividly described inner life -- from her earliest memories of her adoptive mother to her awareness of impending death This is the poignant story of Daisy Goodwill, twentieth-century pilgrim, from her calamitous birth in Canada to her death in a Florida nursing home nearly ninety years later. Struggling to find her place in the world, she listens and observes, becoming a witness to her own life and death in this rich tale that reflects and illuminates our own unsettled era. ~from the back cover