Part 1 (1/2)

The Stone Diaries

Carol shi+elds

For my sister, Babs

SUMMARY:

The Stone Diaries is the story of one woman's life; a truly sensuous novel that reflects and illuminates the unsettled decades of our century Born in 1905, Daisy Goodwill drifts through the chapters of childhood, e Bewildered by her inability to understand her own role, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her own story within a novel that is itself about the liraphy

INTRODUCTION

The best fiction surprises-and withholds Each time that I read The Stone Diaries The Stone Diaries I see it differently It is a story, first of all-the story of a woman, Daisy Goodwill, later Daisy Goodwill Flett It is also many stories-those of her family and her friends You read it first as such, drawn in at once by the co to happen-to Daisy, to the rest of them Subsequently it becomes a view of how one woman-many women-lived in the twentieth century, what they expected and as expected of them It can be seen as a discussion of the nature of evidence-the way in which there is no single truth about anyone's life, but as many truths as there are observers I see it differently It is a story, first of all-the story of a woman, Daisy Goodwill, later Daisy Goodwill Flett It is also many stories-those of her family and her friends You read it first as such, drawn in at once by the co to happen-to Daisy, to the rest of them Subsequently it becomes a view of how one woman-many women-lived in the twentieth century, what they expected and as expected of them It can be seen as a discussion of the nature of evidence-the way in which there is no single truth about anyone's life, but as many truths as there are observers

And if you are interested in how a novel is made, it turns into an exercise in narrative technique And, perhaps, airily-a dele a cast of twenty characters andthe reader

Here is a story that opens in Manitoba in 1905 and ends in Florida in the 1990s From birth to death-the parabola of a life, a North American life, with brief excursions to France, to Orkney Daisy is born into a world that has known neither of the world wars, and in which a woman is required to be first and foremost a dolobe has contracted and women expect to work outside the horant from Orkney: At the end of the century Daisy will fly the ocean to trace him She has experienced the century in a temporal sense, but, as we learn in one of the novel's deft co, pierced ears, body e, and e Born in ”the murderously hot back kitchen” of a Manitoba stone-worker's home, she will spend her last years in a three-bedroom Florida condo, a Florida bluehead in a turquoise pantsuit

Kitchens are rich with significance in the novel-kitchens and what is done in the chapter has the kitchen as the scene of both birth and death, with the Malvern pudding that Daisy'sas an emblem of do fruit juices, the sugar Many years later, Daisy prepares supper for her family-husband, three children-in an Ottawa kitchen (summer heat once more, so a cold meal): jellied veal loaf, sliced tolass bowls There is care and attention: the formality of a tablecloth, and before her husband's return from work Daisy ”fixes” herself-housedress off, fresh clothes, earrings, lipstick We are told that Daisy desires-deeply, fervently, sincerely-to be a good wife and azines, in support of this anificant asides-how others see Daisy-we are given the possible contrasting reactions of a visiting friend of her girlhood, Fraidy Hoyt, herself unri house, the beautiful children; or, is she pityingly conte in domesticity, child-ridden, who probably hasn't read a book in ten years?

Teasingly, we are not told which view Fraidy holds, but this is 1947, and it is te to see Fraidy as the voice of the future, ahead of her day, already with the assuhout the novel, the authorial voice alternates with those other voices, creating a deliberate auity We knohat happens to Daisy, and frequently she speaks for herself, but we see her also as others see her, and no two people see her in the same way Was she happy as a domestic Goddess? Maybe not, for in the next, and crucial section of the book-significantly called ”Work, 19551964”-she is shown, entirely obliquely, through a sequence of letters written by others, as i correspondent for the local paper, and eventually devastated and plunged into a lengthy episode of depression when she gets the sack So was domestic life not work? This section is one of the ives ht, as we see Daisy's life of that time shi+mmer behind the words of other people, and it becomes clear that this is the point at which Daisy has achieved some kind of fulfillment and discovers in herself a capacity of which she had been unaware She strove to be a good wife and mother, but was she in fact stifled by that role?

The whole novel is a cunning tapestry of evidence Any novelist is of course in the happy position of being o just how much information to release to the reader The Stone Diaries The Stone Diaries is a virtuoso discussion of the nature of evidence itself, of the ways in which it is unreliable and conflicting In a revealing sequence, we are given a whole slew of opinions about Daisy-those of her children, of her cousin, of Fraidy Hoyt once more Fraidy believes her to have suffered fro her own fifty-four lovers as though this were a more normal record Her cousin thinks the children drained her Her daughter Alice sees her-fro woman of the 1960s-as without self-esteem in her domestic days: ”She functioned like a kind of slave in our society” This analysis is taking place during Daisy's period of depression after she loses her journalistic job, and as a coda to the alternative viee are given an authorial gli inside her like a s creature is the certainty that she'll recover” nobody else has mentioned resilience, the capacity to survive Maybe this is the key to Daisy's personality is a virtuoso discussion of the nature of evidence itself, of the ways in which it is unreliable and conflicting In a revealing sequence, we are given a whole slew of opinions about Daisy-those of her children, of her cousin, of Fraidy Hoyt once more Fraidy believes her to have suffered fro her own fifty-four lovers as though this were a more normal record Her cousin thinks the children drained her Her daughter Alice sees her-fro woman of the 1960s-as without self-esteem in her domestic days: ”She functioned like a kind of slave in our society” This analysis is taking place during Daisy's period of depression after she loses her journalistic job, and as a coda to the alternative viee are given an authorial gli inside her like a s creature is the certainty that she'll recover” nobody else has mentioned resilience, the capacity to survive Maybe this is the key to Daisy's personality

After Daisy's death these conflicting voices are once again heard, but interwoven noith another kind of evidence-the cool and indisputable facts of her life: the sequence of addresses at which she has lived, the illnesses froanizations to which she has belonged, the list of her bridal lingerie at her 1927 wedding These flat lists are indeed evidence of a kind-a biographer could ood use of them-and they serve as a neat indication of the times in which she has lived, but they are also bland and uninfor voice They are there to de and unco features is the attention to detail, the use of detail to evoke ti in that Manitoba kitchen to the account of Daisy's sparse possessions in the hospital room of her last days: a toothbrush, toothpaste, a co of keysPhysical objects are made to provide another kind of evidence, to conjure up the backdrop to Daisy's life, and they are meticulously chosen and placed within the narrative Detail is made to define a character: Daisy's husband, Barker Flett, a senior civil servant with an expertise in botany, is devoted to taxono of the botanical world, and we are first introduced to hi man with a passionate dedication to the western lady's slipper, genus Cypripediu his dissertation: ”Dorsal sepal, colu bract, eye and root” Sos Barker Flett more sharply to life than any detached account: We see the way in which he saw things When we learn what Daisy is wearing as a baby-a tucked nainsook day-slip topped by a plain flannel barrowcoat, which in turn was topped by a buttoned vest in fine white wool, the archaic terms are perfectly evocative of an early twentieth-century infant, and also say so her One of the funniest passages in the novel is also one of thevoice of Mrs Hoad,bride-to-be: ”When you set the table, be sure the knife blade is turned in In Not out on which he is writing his dissertation: ”Dorsal sepal, colu bract, eye and root” Sos Barker Flett more sharply to life than any detached account: We see the way in which he saw things When we learn what Daisy is wearing as a baby-a tucked nainsook day-slip topped by a plain flannel barrowcoat, which in turn was topped by a buttoned vest in fine white wool, the archaic terms are perfectly evocative of an early twentieth-century infant, and also say so her One of the funniest passages in the novel is also one of thevoice of Mrs Hoad,bride-to-be: ”When you set the table, be sure the knife blade is turned in In Not out

Salad forks, of course, go outside the dinner forkGrape-nuts are a necessity, also a very economical foodI wonder if you have discovered Venitian Velva Liquid for your own skinFor bath powder I suggest Poudre de Lilas So odors” This torrential discourse not only tells us all we need to know about Mrs Hoad, but serves also as ainto the lifestyle of the prosperous social circles of Blooton, Indiana, in 1927 And on top of such set-piece instances of deliberate accuracy there is the occasional gift of a piece of throay detail that acts as a kind of marker, a reminder of the basic procontained three fused fossils of an extre The Stone Diaries The Stone Diaries

Stone is the foundation of the narrative-the dolomitic limestone quarries of Manitoba in which work both Daisy's father and the father of her future husband, Barker Flett In tiure, a position dependent upon his initial skill with stone Magnus Flett will eventually return to his native Orkney, solitary and resigned, alienated fro the reassurance of that stony landscape from which he came There is a sense in which Daisy's own life has been conditioned by stone-her birth in Manitoba, her subsequent youth in Blooton, Indiana, to which her father's skills have taken hiarded, her eventual e to and life with Barker Flett, himself a child of the quarries The narrative rests upon stone, as it were, but its driving force is work

Work is too often glossed over in fiction, put aside The Stone Diaries The Stone Diaries pays proper attention to work, without ever beco tedious Most people's lives, after all, are donizes that fact, and gives it due respect We are told about people's working lives, with the greatest economy, from the daily time-table of the Manitoba quarrymen to Barker Flett and his lady's slippers, and, later in the century, Daisy's daughter Alice with her rarefied academic studies of Chekhov And there is also, of course, the central issue of Daisy herself, her brief burst of journalistic eood wife and mother can be called work or not pays proper attention to work, without ever beco tedious Most people's lives, after all, are donizes that fact, and gives it due respect We are told about people's working lives, with the greatest economy, from the daily time-table of the Manitoba quarrymen to Barker Flett and his lady's slippers, and, later in the century, Daisy's daughter Alice with her rarefied academic studies of Chekhov And there is also, of course, the central issue of Daisy herself, her brief burst of journalistic eood wife and mother can be called work or not The Stone Diaries The Stone Diaries is a novel full of activity, soe (those hot kitchens), soround, but very rounded-we kno they have spent their days, whether they are conjured up by the authorial voice or made to speak for thee (those hot kitchens), soround, but very rounded-we kno they have spent their days, whether they are conjured up by the authorial voice or made to speak for themselves

This matter of voices directs the novel,Carol shi+elds has used a co series of narrative devices hich to tell the story, from the detached authorial voice to the voices of the various characters, by way of letters, lists, and newspaper entries It is a bold technique that is here entirely successful The various shi+fts in narrative forued

Sometimes Daisy is allowed to speak for herself;about her, or we hear of her in detachment, as we look over her creator's shoulder And then there is the sudden jolt of a letter, or the intervention of a friend or family member This is a narrative style that lends itself to the most effective kind of econo least She never tells us that Alice is a somewhat prickly and difficult woman; we learn this froeous-my, she's mellowed” And the letter sequence from which we learn about Daisy's period as Mrs Green Thu conclusion, is wonderfully deft It covers a handful of pages, where a conventional narrative forer and carried far less punch

This narrative technique has allowed Carol shi+elds to escape the straitjacket of a long plod through the years She can ho that to life

She can relay an important piece of inforh the content of a solicitor's letter-far ent than a plain state stretches of time, but loop back to thee studies in nineteenth-century Italian history, revealed by her son Warren, who came across a box of old essays in the storerooliht is perhaps thrown on the frustrations of her later life And the technique allows for an effective for, so that we see some events at a slant, from a throay comment-that Fraidy Hoyt has been ed, that Beans (Daisy's other girlhood friend) has been abandoned by her husband

But perhaps the nificant effect of this technique is the way in which it can be seen to mirror the processes of ical; neither is it a narrative

Memory is like a series of slides, any of which may flash up at any time, in no particular order, and without links between theives us the arc of Daisy's life fro entries-long, short, expansive, terse-seem to mimic the way in which memory also makes a nonsense of time In the mind, some entire years vanish into a black hole of oblivion, while a fewthere forever, brilliant with detail and effect A childhoodan event of last month A technique that abandons conventional narrative and plays with different voices, different ways of getting information across, seems to echo the contents of the mind, where what is seen, heard, and felt is all ju systeives us the arc of Daisy's life fro entries-long, short, expansive, terse-seem to mimic the way in which memory also makes a nonsense of time In the mind, some entire years vanish into a black hole of oblivion, while a fewthere forever, brilliant with detail and effect A childhoodan event of last month A technique that abandons conventional narrative and plays with different voices, different ways of getting information across, seems to echo the contents of the mind, where what is seen, heard, and felt is all ju system

But a novel requires systeenuinely reflected the processes ofbut would also be pretty unreadable We tolerate our own chaotic memories because we hold the key to the private code While the structure of The Stone Diaries The Stone Diaries hints at the operation of memory, it also respects the requirements of fiction, the first of which is to remember the reader Readers demand coherence; confuse them and you have lost the as it sweeps the reader along, and hints at the operation of memory, it also respects the requirements of fiction, the first of which is to remember the reader Readers demand coherence; confuse them and you have lost the as it sweeps the reader along, and The Stone Diaries The Stone Diaries scores high In fact, the switches from one voice to another, froue to letters, serve to keep the reader involved and expectant You want to knoill happen next, and what has happened, but you are also drawn in by the presentation-the switches require attention scores high In fact, the switches from one voice to another, froue to letters, serve to keep the reader involved and expectant You want to knoill happen next, and what has happened, but you are also drawn in by the presentation-the switches require attention

The Stone Diaries is a relatively short novel that seereat deal happens to e cast, but even without the courtesy of the family tree provided it is not hard to keep track of relationshi+ps and connections Characters drop out and can be forgotten until some neat reintroduction, such as the reroup in the Manitoba kitchen on the day of Daisy's birth-in the words of his grandson, decades later We discover how that day had been a seeneration, but there is the satisfactory continuity of the people whose lives run parallel to Daisy's and who irlhood friends Fraidy and Beans is a relatively short novel that seereat deal happens to e cast, but even without the courtesy of the family tree provided it is not hard to keep track of relationshi+ps and connections Characters drop out and can be forgotten until some neat reintroduction, such as the reroup in the Manitoba kitchen on the day of Daisy's birth-in the words of his grandson, decades later We discover how that day had been a seeneration, but there is the satisfactory continuity of the people whose lives run parallel to Daisy's and who irlhood friends Fraidy and Beans

In all of her fiction, Carol shi+elds excels at character creation

She conjures up a character in a few lines of dialogue, in a pungent authorial aside The cast of The Stone Diaries The Stone Diaries briures such as Cuyler Goodwill or Barker Flett, or peripheral figures such as Cuyler's second wife, Maria, who erupts into the story in a gust of exuberant and incomprehensible Italian It is this precision about her characters that enables Carol shi+elds to field such a generous cast; we don't get confused about people because all are so distinctive briures such as Cuyler Goodwill or Barker Flett, or peripheral figures such as Cuyler's second wife, Maria, who erupts into the story in a gust of exuberant and incomprehensible Italian It is this precision about her characters that enables Carol shi+elds to field such a generous cast; we don't get confused about people because all are so distinctive

There is one exception: Daisy herself This is of course entirely deliberate We never see Daisy in such sharp relief because our view of her is uity about the perception of Daisy that is a reflection of the as to so else to others And because the novel is in one sense a discussion of the nature of evidence, there can be no hard and fast definition of Daisy As the focus of the story, around whoree elusive; the reader's contribution is invited How do you see Daisy?

For my own part, I see her differently each time I revisit the novel: Sometied by the claims of others The essential quality of the best fiction is that it should offer itself afresh at each reading-you find aspects that you had apparently missed before, you home in on some feature that had passed you by is a novel so rich in characters, in events, in sharply evoked settings that it never fails to provide sole If you read it with an eye to the backdrop alone, there is a range that runs from the stone quarries of Manitoba to the flat, bleak, windy landscape of Orkney, by way of prosperous Blooton and the condominium land of Florida Sometimes the hu Daisy and her girlfriends, Mrs Hoad's spiel of instruction, the wry e contained in the letters sequence about Mrs Green Thu-that wonderfully accurate dialogue, the apt phrases that shi+ne out on every page There is no slack anywhere in this novel; it is taut froraph essential, each section springing from its predecessor I have enjoyed and admired all of Carol shi+elds's work, and I believe to be her masterpiece

-Penelope Lively

The Stone Diaries

CHAPTER ONE

Birth, 1905

My mother's name was Mercy Stone Goodwill She was only thirty years old when she took sick, a boiling hot day, standing there in her back kitchen,for her husband's supper A cookery book lay open on the table: ”Take some slices of stale bread,” the recipe said, ”and one pint of currants; half a pint of raspberries; four ounces of sugar; some sweet cream if available” Of course she's divided the recipe in half, there being just the two of them, and ith the scarcity of currants, and Cuyler ( a dainty eater A pick-and-nibble fellow, she calls him, able to take his food or leave it

It sha his spoon around in his dish, perhaps raising his eyes once or twice to send her one of his shy, appreciative glances across the table, but never taking a second helping, just leaving it all for her to finish up-pulling his hand through the air with that drea all the while, his daft tender-faced look What did foodman like himself? A bother, a distraction, perhaps even a kind of price that had to be paid in order to re

Well, it was a different story for her, forwas as close to heaven as my mother ever came (In our day we have a name for a passion as disordered as hers) And alloried in it! Every last body on this earth has a particular notion of paradise, and this was hers, standing in theand contriving, leaning forward and squinting at the fine print of the cookery book, a clean wooden spoon in hand

It's so to see, the way she concentrates, her hot, busy face, the way she thrills to see the dish take for the thickly cut bread down over the oozing juices, feeling it soften and absorb bit by bit a raspberry redness Malvern pudding; she loves the words too, and feels theue itself groaferlike and sweet Like an artist-years later this fores and draws in her brooding lower lip Such a dish this will be A war up color (Mrs Flett next door let her have some currants off her bush; the raspberries she's found herself along the roadside south of the village, even though it half kills her, a wo out in the heat of the day) She sprinkles on extra sugar, one spoonful, then another, then takes the spoon to her h crystals that keep her alert

It is three o'clock-a hot July afternoon in the middle of Manitoba, in the middle of the Doilded feet, a wedding present from her husband's family, the Goodwills of Stonewall Townshi+p) has just struck the hour

Cuyler will be hoood cheerful wash at the kitchen basin, and by half-past five the two of them will sit down at the table-this very table, only spread with a clean cloth, every second day a clean cloth-and eat their supper Which for theshy by nature, and each brought up in the belief that conversing and eating are different functions, occupying separate trenches of tiht they will partake of cold corned beef with a spoonful of homemade relish, some dressed potatoes at the side, cups of sweet tea, and then this fine pudding His eyes iden; ht, two years(That's what she's preparing for-his stunned and ratefulopen in surprise It's the least she can do, surprise him like this) She sets a flower-patterned plate carefully on top of the pudding and weights it with a stone

A cool place, the recipe says: ”Set the mould in a cool place”

(The book is an old one, printed in England es lient) Yet where on a day like today is Mercy Goodwill to find a cool place? Even the dark stone floor under the cellar steps where she stores heroff this last fortnight a queer sour smell The Flett family, next door, has recently purchased a Labrador Ice Chest, zinc-lined, and Mrs Flett has spoken shyly of this acquisition to Mercy,flues, the shi+ning tin provision shelves, how a block of ice is able to last through tarht, the worry over how to keep the pudding cool, or perhaps envy for the Fletts' new ice chest, brings on ives a little cry Her eyes pull tight at the corners, as though someone has taken hold of her hair and yanked it upward so that her scalp sings A witness, had there been a witness present in the little back kitchen, h iven to faintness What she feels isat first, and then an abrupt drop, a squeezing like an accordion held sideways