Maybe Her Life, Maybe Not

The Stone Diaries
Carol Shields
Penguin, 1993
361 pages


The story follows the life of Daisy Goodwill Hoad Flett from her unexpected birth to her death. Superficially it is the fictional biography of Daisy and several generations of her family and friends. But pay closer attention and you begin to wonder, who is telling the story? And is this really a truthful biography - true within the fictional world of the novel?

The narration is unusual in that it switches between first and third person, perhaps even second person at times. Then there is the problem of the unreliable narrator. We are told her mother is hugely obese and taller than her father; yet the photos included in the book show a large but not obese woman who is shorter than her husband. At one point, the narrator even warns us not to believe the narration!

We are never sure who the narrator is or perhaps who the narrators are. Daisy seems to be telling her story as she witnessed it, but she could hardly have witnessed the scenes surrounding her birth nor those of her father's death. As the narration drifts in and out of first person "I" and third person "she" or "he" statements, things sometimes seem dreamlike and unreal.

The main thread of the story is always clear, but we are not sure whose viewpoint we're getting and why they are telling us these things. Is Daisy imagining what her father was thinking or is that the omniscient narrator telling us his thoughts?

We learn a lot about Daisy, her father, Cuyler Goodwill, and her husband, Barker Flett - true or untrue we cannot tell. Of the rest of the characters mentioned, we only see glimpses and fleeting thoughts as they interact with Daisy or discuss her. Fortunately the book has family trees as well as photos to sort out the friends and family members. More books should include family trees!

In an interview Carol Shields said she was interested in the interior lives of women and couldn't find novels about that so she wrote them herself. Daisy's interior life is very interesting and despite the questions I had, her life story was very enjoyable to read. I cared about the characters and their stories.

The trade magazine "Publishers Weekly" had a nice overall summary of the novel:

It is at once a playful sendup of the art of biography and a serious exploration of the essential mystery of human lives; the gist of this many-faceted story is that all biographies are only versions of the facts.

Prizes Won by "The Stone Diaries"

• shortlisted for the Booker Prize 1993
• Canada Governor General's Award 1994
• National Book Critics Circle Award 1994
• Pulitzer Prize 1995

FURTHER READING

• The Carol Shields Literary Trust
• Penguin: The Stone Diaries Reader’s Guide
• LitLovers: The Stone Diaries - Reading Guide - Book Club Discussion Questions

Immersed in 1930s England

Diary of a Provincial Lady
E. M. Delafield
Harper & Brothers, 1931
388 pages


I have taken 70 years to discover the delights of the Provincial Lady; pray do not make the same mistake! First and foremost, this is a funny book - not uproarious, belly-shaking-laughter kind of funny, but more a gentle-chuckle and wry-smile kind of funny. While looking for a quote to tweet out during the recent mini Persephone Readathon, I had trouble because the Provincial Lady doesn't use one-liners. Her humor is prefaced with paragraphs of setup, most well beyond Twitter's character limits. Funny stories, funny vignettes.

The book purports to be the diary of a country gentlewoman living an upper-middle-class life in 1930s England. This is not beautiful, lilting prose, but short, witty, descriptive phrases and sentences, often reminder notes to herself or philosophical questions to ponder later. Most of these asides are satirical in nature, even quite caustic at times, as she keenly and mercilessly observes her fellow man and herself.

I love that it portrays daily life in a foreign country, even if we Americans don't think of England as being particularly foreign. And I was amazed at how many words, phrases, book titles, and names of people I had to look up to find out what she was talking about! When an older book mentions domestic things like food, famous people, popular songs, and fashions, it can be difficult to follow. Many times a standard college dictionary didn't help, and I spent a lot of time Googling and searching Wikipedia for information. Ever since I was a kid, I've always had to know what every word means in a book. I'm going to create another post with my annotations to this book, so future readers can benefit from my inquisitiveness and research. I have over 70 entries in my notes!

This book proved to be very popular and she wrote 3 more diaries in the Provincial Lady series:

1. "Diary of a Provincial Lady" (1930)
2a. "The Provincial Lady Goes Further" (1932 - second book title in England)
2b. "The Provincial Lady in London" (1933 - second book title in America)
3. "The Provincial Lady in America" (1934)
4. "The Provincial Lady in Wartime" (1940)

There are books with various titles about the Provincial Lady in Russia, but according to a blog review by I Prefer Reading, Delafield wrote that book as herself, not as a diary of the Provincial Lady.

This book was very fun to read. I felt I had spent the weekend in 1930 in England with some close friends.



Further Reading:

Persephone Prize essay contest at Persephone Books
Shortlisted: Charlotte Ford, 'The Provincial Lady's Husband'

... this essay will seek to argue that a) the Provincial Lady’s husband is actually rather lovable; b) his character supports and complements the Provincial Lady’s to their mutual benefit;  and c) the Provincial Lady fully appreciates both a) and b).  It will then Go Further, and argue that Robert is in fact The Perfect Husband.

Mini Persephone Readathon Wrap Up

I spent a beautiful Summer weekend reading "Diary of a Provincial Lady" by E. M. Delafield. Happy weather, happy book! Delafield wrote thinly veiled stories of her real life in the British countryside, with a very dry wit and many trenchant observations of British society.

I completed 4 of the Mini Persephone Challenges:

* Photogenic Persephones: Share a photo of your Persephone collection and/or your readathon book

Not the Persephone edition, but the best cover I found for "Diary of a Provincial Lady". It combines several Arthur Watts' illustrations from the 1st edition and colors them in.

* In Six Words: Describe your current Persephone read in 6 words

witty family life 1930s British village

* Quote This: Share a quote from your current read

(Query here becomes unavoidable: Does not a misplaced optimism exist, common to all mankind, leading on to false conviction that social engagements, if dated sufficiently far ahead, will never really materialise?)

The Provincial Lady is SO quotable, I'm giving you another:

(Query: Does motherhood lead to cynicism? This contrary to every convention of art, literature, or morality, but cannot altogether escape conviction that answer may be in the affirmative.)

* Persephone Pairings: Share a recipe/drink/snack that you think would pair well with a specific Persephone title

    tea and gingernuts (gingersnaps in the US)

This mini readathon was fun! I enjoyed my concentrated reading time spent in 1930s England and the interesting Tweets about everyone else's Persephone books. Thanks Jessie for setting it up. I'll review the book officially soon.

Murder and Intrigue with Elephant

The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra
Vaseem Khan
Redhook Books, 2015
294 pages


The is the first book in a cozy mystery series set in modern India, "A Baby Ganesh Agency Investigation". As the book opens, Inspector Ashwin Chopra from the Mumbai (née Bombay) police is starting what will become a very memorable day: a body is discovered, he retires early for health reasons, and he inherits a baby elephant from an uncle.

The mystery felt very much imbedded in India, not one that was simply dropped into an exotic local for effect. Mumbai and its people and culture are very much a part of the story being told. Values of honesty and virtue are discussed and the family is paramount in the characters' lives. Khan gives vivid details of the residents' daily lives, middle class and poor alike.

Inspector Chopra is a complex man, much given to musing about his actions, his family, his values, and what retirement means for him. To me he seems akin to Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec in the Louise Penny mystery series, another complex, thoughtful police inspector. They are the Good Guys, the honest, upright, caring individuals who feel compelled to fight the world's evil, although Gamache's books are grittier and not cozy mysteries. I just think the two men would hit it off rather well.

Then there are the elephants. Inspector Chopra spends time learning about his new charge and we learn about the care and feeding and emotional lives of elephants. Since I have always been very fond of elephants and elephant images, I knew this series would be just the thing for a summer read, very charming, and who can resist a baby elephant named Ganesha as a sidekick to a detective? Bonus: there are now 4 more books in this series!


Further Reading

Vaseem Kahn's website
The author has a newsletter, a glossary of Indian words, some baby elephant pictures, and general information about himself. You can also join The Reading Elephant Book Club with a quarterly newsletter.

Is She an Excellent Woman?

Excellent Women
Barbara Pym
E. P. Dutton, 1978 (originally published 1952)
256 pages


This is Barbara Pym's best known novel, a lightly satiric, wry look at mid-twentieth century London, soon after World War II's end. Mildred is a very kind, unassuming spinster in her mid-thirties, living alone in London. This is her story, told from her point of view, almost as if written in her diary. Although she has no family left and never married, she says she enjoys her solitude and is happy with a part-time job with an impoverished gentlewomen’s group and her work in the church. In the book, women who do that sort volunteer work are condescendingly referred to as "excellent women" by other characters.

Mildred is quite perceptive about the people she finds around her: the pastor and his spinster sister, the members of her church, her new neighbors, her old school friend. She wonders how a group of anthropologists she meets can be so insightful about the primitive tribes they study and yet so obtuse about their own lives. She marvels that the unmarried pastor can be so smitten with an uncharitable, unacceptable woman. She examines her own thoughts and feelings closely, as well, with a self-deprecating humor.

However as a single woman without family ties, everyone she knows presumes she will help them, expecting her to automatically be there for their needs. And she invariably is, although she does allow herself a grumble here and there about it. Thus she finds herself doing things she doesn't really want to do at all.

It's a quiet book, no dramatic disasters befall Mildred, although the lives of her friends do seem to constantly be in turmoil and in need of her assistance. Overall I enjoyed this look at post-war London and it was very well-written. Mildred's observations are spot on. But I found her passivity in the face of others' demands upon her very sad. This counts as the 20th century classic books for the Back to the Classics 2018 Challenge.


Further Reading

Reader's Guide by Penguin/Random House