THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 13, 1995 TAG: 9508100677
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The novel also won the National Book Critics Circle Award. And the Governor General's Award of Canada.
It deserved to.
Now this superlative work is out in a $10.95 paperback edition from Penguin Books.
Buy it, read it, pass it on to a discerning friend.
The Stone Diaries is the reflective autobiography of a woman who never lived but embodies many who have. Daisy Goodwill Flett, born in the early years of this century and departed toward the end of it, becomes a prototype for the unsung, substantial but occasionally oblivious female of her time. She is not a genius; she moves habitually and almost intuitively in the direction of least resistance; she leaves behind offspring, regrets and an impeccable reputation.
She is a person of insignificant achievements as the world measures grandeur.
A snatch of dialogue between two of Daisy's grown children:
``Do you think her life would have been different if she'd been a man?''
``Are you kidding!''
But The Stone Diaries is not a feminist novel. It is not a tract, not an indictment, and only tangentially satirical. It simply acknowledges the constrictive circumstances of certain women in the 20th century and, above all, the often poignant differences between uncommunicative guys and emotionally gregarious gals. Differences that do not, unconfronted, result in happy marriages.
Men would profit enormously from reading this book, if only to acquire insight into the other side.
Seeking to present, clearly and unblinkingly, ``what can be shaped from blood and ignorance,'' Shields offers, paradoxically, a compelling portrait of the commonplace.
Now there's a woman who made a terrific meatloaf, who knew how to repot a drooping rubber plant, who bid a smart no-trump hand, who wore a hat well, who looked after her personal hygiene, who wrote her thank-you notes promptly, who kept up, who went down, went down and down and down, who missed the point, the point of it all, but was, nevertheless, almost unfailingly courteous to others.
Using a quiltlike format, the author takes key years in the progress of Daisy's life and sews them, swatchlike, together, so that by the end, the overall pattern of her days becomes coherent to the protagonist and to us. The unremarkable life becomes remarkable.
There is an undeniable element of culminating joylessness to this novel, an elegiac sense of unfulfilled potential and missed opportunities. We want Daisy to be more. She can't be; it's too bad.
That's the point.
Flett, Daisy (nee Goodwill), who, due to historical accident, due to carelessness, due to ignorance, due to lack of opportunity and courage, never once in her many years of life experienced the excitement and challenge of oil painting, skiing, sailing, nude bathing, emerald jewelry, cigarettes, oral sex, pierced ears, Swedish clogs, water beds, science fiction, pornographic movies, religious ecstasy, truffles, Kirsch, jalapeno peppers, Peking duck, Vienna, Moscow, Madrid, group therapy, body massage, hunger, distinguished honors, outraged condemnation, who never drove a car, never bought a lottery ticket, never, never (on the other hand) was struck on the face or body by another being, never once perched her reading glasses (with a sigh) in the crown of her hair, never (for fear of ridicule) investigated the possibilities of plastic surgery or yoga, never gave herself over to the kind of magazine article that tells you to be good to yourself, to believe in yourself and to do things for yourself. Nor, though she knew she had been loved in her life, did she ever hear the words ``I love you, Daisy'' uttered aloud (such a simple phrase), and only during the long, thin, uneventful sleep that preceded her death did she have the wit (and leisure) to ponder the injustice of this.
Well.
Just for the record:
I love you, Daisy. MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia Wesleyan
College. by CNB