Gundi Harriss

How to live in the ‘Kingdom of Money’? A wonderful novel about crime and tragedy, and marriage. It is also a Fairy Tale, though short lived. It is beautifully written, full of suspense and surprises. I loved it.

I think it is a wonderful novel written in a beautifully restrained prose about a young man ´coming to life’ when he discovers literature and poetry and some kind of community life after years of a lonely life labouring on his parents´ farm and on the farm of relatives where he works for his keep so he can go to university. He finds relative security at the university and he will stay there for the rest of his life. It is not a great heroic life, but one of struggle and forbearance, and stoicism and Is totally engaging. Stoner, it seems, has to learn everything the hard way. Shy, inexperienced, often socially inept, he stumbles when others, ie his friend Masters, proceeds with at least a pretence of assuredness. Stoner’s daily experiences are about learning almost everything from scratch. And this is also The case when he falls in love and finds about women in real life. Not in literature or poems but in this case with Edith, his wife to be. Oddly enough I find none of the misogyny the novel or its main character Stoner is accused of by Elaine Showalter. Against the background of the first two decades of the 20. Century the women In Stoner appear frighteningly real in their repression and their protected environment. What I particularly loved about the portrayal of Stoner’s wife was that she only gradually takes shape. She hardly seems to have substance when we get to read about her. When Stoner gets to know her - it is unfortunately - through her aloofness, coldness, odd behaviours. Meanwhile the narrator virtually predicts the disaster of their marriage. There is much more to find out! Read it, you will not regret it. Go to Aaustin Aaronson for a fantastic review.