Stoner

Paperback, 320 pages

English language

Published Nov. 8, 2012 by Vintage Books.

ISBN:
978-0-09-956154-5
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OCLC Number:
879331811

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4 stars (5 reviews)

William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at nineteen to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature changes his life, and he never returns to work on his father's farm. Stoner becomes a teacher. He marries the wrong woman. 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. A reading experience like no other, itself a paean to the power of literature, it is a novel to be savoured.

--back cover

41 editions

reviewed Stoner by John Williams (NYRB Classics)

Brilliantly depressing

5 stars

An unexpected find by Dave for our Kindle and possibly one of the most depressing stories I have read! Don't get me wrong. I loved the book and the writing is incredible but the lead character's life is very sad in that the personal cost to him of brief episodes of happiness is intense sorrow. The descriptions of certain classes of people at the beginning of the 20th century, particularly Stoner's wife Edith, are fantastic, as is the portrayal of his parents and their isolation. A great book but not a light read!

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4 stars
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5 stars