Stoner
About this book
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.
Reader Profile
4.4/5 · 295163 readers · 336 pages · ≈ 6 h 13 m · Moderate
How long does it take to read Stoner?
About ≈ 6 h 13 m — 336 pages, assuming roughly 250 words per page at 225 words per minute.
How many pages is Stoner?
336 pages in its most-read edition.
What genre is Stoner?
It sits on the Fiction shelves.
Is Stoner in the public domain?
No — it is still under copyright.
Who are the main characters in Stoner?
The main characters include William Stoner, Charles Walker, Hollis Lomax, Katherine Driscoll.
Where does Stoner take place?
It is set in American Midwest, Columbia, University of Missouri.
Who wrote Stoner?
John Williams.