Stoner
by John Williams
★★★★★ finished 12 July 2026
Like Grief Is the Thing with Feathers A Novel, I picked this up at Exile in Booksville, in Chicago. Also like that book, this came recommended by an employee, with a slip of paper on the shelf. It said something along the lines of: "This is one of my favorite books of all time, and one of the most inexplicable. Just READ STONER. You will not regret it."
SPOILERS BELOW. I do want to try my hand at recounting what makes this book so special. But I must say, going in with no idea what it was, I was blown off my feet by how moving I found it. I will second the recommendation of the bookstore employee to simply pick this book up and let it carry you along for a while.
It's the entire rollercoaster of a life, rolled into a moving story. It's the fluttering joy of silently falling in love with a girl at a party, the overwhelming fear turning to unbearable elation as she agrees to a date and eventually to marry you, and the crushing decades of loveless marriage that hit you before you realize you've become complacent in your own misery. Like The Death of Ivan Ilyich, it's a wake up call against that kind of complacency in life. It's also about passion. He finds his place in the academy of his time, his passion for literature. And he has talent. But the book shows how that passion can get away from you. Maybe ten years go by and you haven't picked up the project that once moved you so much. Maybe an affair with a passionate colleague is what rekindles your love for the act of creation itself. Maybe the greatest loss of your life will be the loss of your daughter, but not to some accident or illness, but to your own desperately miserable spouse in a revenge plot neither of you ever speak of aloud. Maybe no words or effort could ever unravel the wounds you've inflicted on each other, and that spiraling tangle pattern is the world your daughter knows.
The book helped me understand what it's like to be exhausted by life. But it's not dismal. There are islands of the deepest joy sprinkled throughout his life. I felt it all, looking through his eyes.