Oakleigh’s Reviews > Stoner > Status Update

"Stoner looked upon the transformation [of his daughters depression] with a sadness that belied that indifferent face he presented to the world. He did not allow himself the easy luxury of guilt; given his own nature and the circumstances of his life with Edith, there was nothing that he could have done."
// Every time I think I may be capable of forgiving his flaccid passivity, he pulls some rubbish like this UGH!

"In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another."

No actually, let me be more clear: Stoner, in less than 100 pages, has managed to utterly disgust me. Selfish, self absorbed, thoughtless, passive, weak, and consumed by his own desire with no thoughts for the good of any but himself - he will take and take and destroy and steal and ravage his way through life thinking all along nothing at all. He is SUCH a "man", in the sense of the old school patriarchy. Uugh.

"Afterwards he lay beside her and spoke to her in the quietness of his love. Her eyes were open then, and they stared at him out of the shadow; there was no expression on her face." // HOW can he write of love? For him to claim to "love" her when she's been nothing but resistant and afraid, when this entire marriage is against her will, is disgusting. Does the author realise Edith is a traumatised victim? Poor girl..