The Stone Diaries Critical Essay | The Stone Diaries

Critical Review by Margery Fee

SOURCE: "Auto/Biographical Fictions," in Canadian Literature, No. 144, Spring, 1995, pp. 173-74.

[In the review below, Fee examines narration and the theme of domesticity in The Stone Diaries.]

The Stone Diaries begins: "My mother's name was Mercy Stone Goodwill." Daisy Goodwill Flett appears to be telling the story of her life, beginning with the day of her birth, a birth which almost immediately leads to her mother's death. That this is a novel about the limitations of biography and autobiography is a point made in almost every review and publisher's summary of this novel, reinforced by the book's use of photographs, the family tree on the endpapers, the title, format and many direct comments on the subject. However, The Stone Diaries is, one must point out, a work of fiction, neither autobiography or biography (or it could not have been nominated for a Booker Prize or have won the Governor...
(read more)