Prized ‘Diaries’ A Pulitzer Prize Brings Deserved Attention To ‘The Stone Diaries’ And Author Carol Shields

Writer Carol Shields was in the midst of being honored at a small luncheon in Minneapolis, hosted by the Canadian consulate, when the call came. Her publisher was on the line, so she excused herself and went to the phone.

“Something extraordinary has happened,” her caller advised. “You better sit down.”

Shields, who had been standing until that moment two weeks ago, plunked herself down in a large wing chair which was located, fortunately, close by. For the next thing she heard over the phone was that her 1994 novel, “The Stone Diaries,” had just won the Pulitzer Prize.

“My heart was thumping; I was in an absolutely stunned state,” Shields recalled in Seattle recently. “And then I went back to the luncheon, told everyone what had happened, some champagne was brought forth and a toast was soon drunk - I’ve been toasted plenty this past week. And then we all went outside into the rain and posed together for a picture. I will remember those moments for the rest of my life.”

The awarding of literary prizes can be a quirky business, with winning books chosen for all sorts of reasons: a writer’s past work, a writer’s connections, the strong winds of political correctness, the particular tastes of contest judges.

But literary prizes, at their best, still can bring great public attention to deserving writers who have been overlooked. Writers like Cormac McCarthy, Robert Olen Butler, E. Annie Proulx - and now Carol Shields.

The Pulitzer is only the latest prize to come the 59-year-old writer’s way for “The Stone Diaries.” It had earlier won the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and because of Shields’ dual citizenship - she is an American who has lived in Canada since 1957 - it also won the Canadian Governor General’s Award, as well as being a finalist for Britain’s Booker Prize.

“The Stone Diaries” (Penguin, $10.95) is a richly deserving novel, bold in conception, powerfully rendered, immediately memorable. It is the sort of book which - without all the award attention - would have percolated along in sales on the strength of word-of-mouth of the best kind, the recommendations of friends, a favorite selection of reading groups.

It is also the sort of book too often labeled “a woman’s book,” a book that examines life and the most elemental of questions about love and faith and family (” ‘Have you found fulfillment?’ - whatever the hell fulfillment is. ‘Have you had moments of genuine ecstasy? Has it been worth it? … Has it been enough, your life, I mean?’ “). What this novel should be labeled, if anything, is “a human being’s book.”

“The Stone Diaries” tells the life story of one Daisy Stone Goodwill, an ordinary citizen of this extraordinary century, a small mirror in which to view the great changes in daily life through the decades. Goodwill is a daughter, a wife, a mother, but also a prisoner of those roles, a woman who represents, as Shields puts it, “the 99 percent of women from her time who were not able to claim their own lives.”

So, near the end of “The Stone Diaries,” Shields sums up the life of Goodwill - a woman whose quiet heroics and sealed fate would not have merited a footnote in history. And Shields’ describes her with both irony and empathy:

“Now there’s a woman who made a terrific meatloaf, who knew how to repot a drooping rubber plant, who bid a smart no-trump hand, who wore a hat well, who looked after her personal hygiene, who wrote her thank-you notes promptly, who kept up, who went down, went down and down and down, who missed the point, the point of it all, but was, nevertheless, almost unfailingly courteous to others.”

Shields’ own life might well ended up much like her heroine, someone who is said to have “believed in centerpieces.” “Absolutely,” the author concedes. “I’m not that far away from this.”

Shields married at 22, quickly devoted herself to her career of being the wife of a professor of civil engineering and the mother of their five children (four girls, one boy). She had a university degree, but it seemed destined to become, as it was for many women in the 1950s, nothing more than a memento of her earlier life.

Writing had always appealed to Shields and, gradually, she found herself using what little free time she had - before the household would awaken, before the children would come home from school for lunch - to write poems and later short stories.

She wrote her first novel in six weeks, a literary whodunit with what she laughingly describes as “the world’s worst title, ‘The Vortex’ - can you imagine?” It was rejected by three publishers, then buried forever in a cardboard box that now happens to reside in Canada’s national archives.

Shields was undaunted by the disappointment, pressed on with her conviction that she would write the kind of contemporary novel which she could not find.

“In the 1970s,” she recalls, “you had to go all the way back to Jane Austen to read about intelligent women, women I could relate to. I was sure that there had to be a way to write about the lives of women seriously.”

Shields’ second novel (“Small Ceremonies”) was accepted for publication on her 40th birthday and her readership has built slowly, but steadily, on both sides of the Atlantic. She had no expectation that “The Stone Diaries” would represent any great departure from that pattern.

“I didn’t think it would find a large audience - it’s quite a sad book,” Shields says. “My expectations remained very modest because my books had always done modestly.”

All the prizes won by “The Stone Diaries” have changed that and probably changed Shields’ writing life forever, too. But they have not changed her own sense of her own life.

“Being a mother is the most important thing I have done, very honestly,” Shields emphasizes. “But I feel as if I should be holding my breath because I’ve had such a lucky, lucky life - I’ve been lucky in love, lucky in friendship, lucky in health and work. I’ve been lucky to work at what I want to work at - most people don’t get that chance.”