STONER - a totally unforgettable novel - The Bookman on Afternoons with Jim Mora

STONER
John Williams
New York Review Books - Paperback - NZ$28.00

This novel was originally published in 1965, gained respectable reviews and reasonable sales and then went out of print.

Fast-forward 18 years and in 2013 it becomes an unlikely huge best-seller.
Waterstones made it their book of the year, Julian Barnes said it was his must-read novel for 2013, it was called the "greatest American novel you've never heard of, and one of the great forgotten novels of the last century. Then add in word-of- mouth among readers and hey presto you have a best-seller.

Essentially it is the fictional biography of a life-long academic, William Stoner, who goes to the University of Missouri as a student in 1910 and then went on to teach there until his death in 1956.. He is the son of poor farmers who send him to college at great personal sacrifice to study agriculture but while there he is seduced by literature and in particular Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 and so he switches his major to literature.

Modest in length, 218 pages, this is a wonderfully told, beautifully written, breath-taking and at times heart-breaking novel that will be hugely enjoyed by all who love literature. This is not mass market fiction, it is literary fiction.

I can't recommend it enough to readers of serious fiction..

I talked about the book with Jim Mora on his Critical Mass session on Afternoons on Radio NZ National earlier today.