SOURCE: "A Celebrator of the Little Things," in New York Times, Vol. CXLIV, No. 50057, May 10, 1995, p. B2.

In the following review of The Stone Diaries, Gussow provides background on the Shields's life and career.

The Stone Diaries, which won this year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is a rich, panoramic novel in the guise of a biography. As Carol Shields traces the life of Daisy Goodwill, from birth to death, through the 20th century, she creates a family tree and inserts an album of family photographs in the center of the book to underscore the tangibility of her characters.

"When I read biography," she said during an interview, "I always turn to the section of photographs and check the text against the image, again and again, so that when I'm finished reading the book, it opens all by itself to that place."

With the help of her editor, she...