Stoner

Stoner by John Williams William Stoner is born at the end
of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri
farming family. Sent to the state university to study
agronomy he instead falls in love with English literature
and embraces a scholar’s life so different from the
hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years
pass Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments:
marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his
parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn
coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new
love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper
within himself Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his
forebears and confronts an essential solitude. John
Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of
quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only
as an archetypal American but as an unlikely existential
hero standing like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper
in stark relief against an unforgiving world.