A review by blairmahoney
Stoner by John Williams

5.0

This novel is made for people like me who have a deep and abiding love for literature, showing how it can come to define a person's life. There are some beautifully evocative passages that show the protagonist's mind opening as he realises what literature can offer. At times Stoner's antagonists, his wife Edith and Hollis Lomax, can seem almost cartoonish in the way they seek to undermine his modest desires but the novel remains ultimately truthful and heartbreaking. In some ways it struck me as being like a quieter version of Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road in its depiction of a failed marriage and the way a life can be stymied.