The Stone Diaries

I couldn’t help but feel that The Stone Diaries is the maximalist companion to John Williams’ Stoner. Where Stoner was restrained and avoidant—almost disinterested—Daisy is full of anxious yearning. She’s trying, reaching, flailing.

It’s the story of a woman pouring maximum, sometimes chaotic, effort into understanding her place in her own life. There’s longing, over-explaining, silence, trial and error, and abandonment—all tangled up in Daisy’s arc.

There’s so much I loved in this novel, but I’m struggling to gather my thoughts. So instead:

Here I scanned a few of my favorite quotes (click on the picture)

a Goodreads review that captured some of my thoughts:

Life is long... and in this long life you lead a series of mini-lives. In each "life" you become a different version of you. We are blessed with the chance and sometimes forced against our will to reinvent ourselves again and again until one day we are very old and find that we are living in Florida wearing polyester pantsuits. Did you ever imagine that would be you?

That person you marry at a ripe young age may become someone from your past that now seems as insignificant as an old high school boyfriend. That job we have today that's so important may be a mere blip on the radar when we are 85. Will you even remember the name of the company?

It's something I like to think about. And it works both ways. Sometimes I hope that the "life" I'm in never ends and my fear is that one day its time will be up. In other periods of my life, I remember that nothing is forever and this someday may not be remembered by me at all.