SOURCE: A review of The Stone Diaries, in The Christian Science Monitor, March 30, 1994, p. 19.

[In the following review, Van Tuyl Clayton asserts that The Stone Diaries concerns "the universal problem of how ordinary men and women connect with one another and whether they are living authentic lives in an age of frightening change and equally frightening superficiality."]

Bestseller lists these days are flush with stories involving characters of monolithic courage or titanic ambition caught up in strange adventure or romantic exploit.

For those of us fatigued by all this fictional heroism, author Carol Shields has torpedoed the notion that only nervous excitement and derring-do can generate a gripping story. Instead, she meticulously depicts the life of a lone woman, Daisy Goodwill Flett, a character so remarkably ordinary she could be anyone's mother or grandmother.

Despite all this ordinariness, a quality both chilling and fascinating emerges from The Stone...