'The Stone Diaries' (though there are in fact no diaries, they are said to have been lost) because everyone raised in the Orphans' Home in Stonewall Township, Manitoba is given the name of Stone, because Mercy Stone's husband, Cuyler Goodwill, works in the limestone quarries, because her neighbour, the dour Magnus Flett, comes from the stony Orkneys, because Mrs Flett is killed when she falls against the sharp stone corner of the Bank, because for all of us the living cells will be replaced in death by 'the insentience of mineral deposition'. A train of imagery, then, which recalls the mermaid metaphors, 'giving off the fishy perfume of ambiguity' in Shields's last novel, The Republic of Love. The present book is just as readable, but more disconcerting.

LRB 9 September 1993 | PDF Download