Stoner
A Novel
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4.1 • 127 Ratings
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
This unassuming story about the life of a quiet English professor is one of the great rediscovered modern classics.
'A beautiful, sad, utterly convincing account of an entire life' Ian McEwan
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 - of the conflicts, defeats and victories of the human race that pass unrecorded by history - and in doing so reclaims the significance of an individual life.
'A brilliant, beautiful, inexorably sad, wise and elegant novel' Nick Hornby
'A terrific novel of echoing sadness' Julian Barnes
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This reprint of Williams's remarkable 1965 novel offers a window on early 20th century higher education in addition to its rich characterizations and seamless prose. Sent by his hard-scrabble farmer father to the University of Missouri to study agriculture, William Stoner is sidetracked by an obsessive love of literature and stimulated by a curmudgeonly old professor, Archer Sloane. Sloane helps Stoner avoid service in WWI, and Stoner eventually becomes an assistant professor. He then meets and marries a St. Louis beauty, Edith, who quickly subjugates her contemplative, passive husband. As decades pass, Stoner entrenches himself deep into the life of the mind, developing into a master teacher but never finding solace in the outside world. Stoner's single joy is Grace, their daughter, whom Edith appropriates as a weapon in her very personal war against Stoner's quest for inner peace. Williams (1922 1994) won the NBA for Augustus (1973), and NYRB will republish his western, Butch's Crossing next year. Williams's prose flows in a smooth, efficient current that demands contemplation.
Customer Reviews
Review
Beautifully written, but left me depressed.
Stoner - John Williams
Simply put a story of a teachers life,but wow this books style and momentum cascades from page to page like a thriller. Surely a masterpiece. Any words I add are just meaningless. Just read it.
Just Beautiful
I didn't fancy this book from reading the synopsis, and decided to read it on the strength of its reviews. I am so very glad I did. It is one of the most moving books I have read in years. I loved it from the start and was gutted when it ended. I'm now telling all my friends to read this so I can discuss it!