The Stone Diaries
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Narrated by:
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Deborah Drakeford
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Written by:
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Carol Shields
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Penelope Lively - introduction
About this listen
Winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Born in 1905, Daisy Goodwill Flett drifts through the chapters of childhood, marriage, widowhood, remarriage, motherhood, and old age, bewildered by her inability to understand her own role in the unsettled decades of the twentieth century. At last, reflecting on her unobserved and unconventional life, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography.
In The Stone Diaries, one of the most successful and acclaimed novels of our time, Carol Shields weaves the strands of Daisy’s life together in a rich, sensuous, and poignant work that delivers lasting insights into the nature of life—and fiction.
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What the critics say
1993, Governor General's Literary Awards - Fiction, Winner
1995, Pulitzer Prize, Winner
"Carol Shields has explored the mysteries of life with abandon, taking unusual risks along the way. The Stone Diaries reminds us again why literature matters." (The New York Times Book Review)
"...Shields's storytelling is at its most ambitious and compelling." (The Toronto Star)
"A beautiful, darkly ironic novel of misunderstanding and missed opportunities." (Esquire)