‘Stoner is a perfect novel, so well told and beautifully written, so deeply moving, that it takes your breath away’ New York Times
‘A book for everyone, democratic in how it breaks the heart… It is a triumph of literary endeavour. It deserves the status of a classic’ Independent
‘A brilliant, beautiful, inexorably sad, wise, and elegant novel’ Nick Hornby
That’s some high praise for a book that many, including myself, had never heard of.
I received the book for Christmas and knew that I’d be hooked as soon as I started it. The blurb describes the novel with a care and elegance that I am incapable of, so I’ll let the copy of Vintage Classics draw you in:
William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. Later, he becomes a teacher. His life is quiet, and after his death his colleagues remember him rarely.
Yet with truthfulness, compassion and intense power, this novel uncovers a story of universal value. Stoner tells of the conflicts, defeats and victories of the human race that pass unrecorded by history, and reclaims the significance of an individual life.
It’s a novel that effortlessly drags you into its slow and thoughtful rhythm, altering your thinking once you surface from its pages. Life suddenly seems so hectic, garish, and inconsiderate in comparison to the tranquil observations of the narrator and the characters he interacts with.
I often think that the power of a novel comes from the lasting memories that the characters inside it leave you with. I still find myself thinking from time to time about Himself’s ability in the ‘Infinite Jest’ to flag down taxis in seemingly empty streets, or about Lyle, the monk who lives in the main character’s tennis academy, who survives by licking the sweat from the bodies of the willing young tennis prodigies. ‘Stoner’ will leave me with some similarly lasting images – of the protagonist’s casually indifferent daughter’s constant reassurances that ‘it doesn’t matter’, of his wife’s referral to everything in the third person, and of Stoner’s awkward hesitancy as he grasps for the one bit of passion that life has reserved for him.
The style is quite wordy, and the pace is quite slow – you even could comfortably say that nothing exciting happens throughout the novel – but if you enjoy a gripping and atmospheric world, I’d tell you to go for it. Hornby is right; ‘Stoner’ is brilliant, beautiful, sad, wise, and elegant.
Christy Romer 