Stoner (Williams) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
John Williams’s Stoner is something rarer than a great novel—it is a perfect novel, so well told and beautifully written, so deeply moving, that it takes your breath away.
New York Times Book Review


The book begins boldly with a mention of Stoner’s death, and a nod to his profound averageness: "Few students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his courses." By the end, though, Williams has made Stoner’s disappointing life into such a deep and honest portrait, so unsoftened and unromanticized, that it’s quietly breathtaking.
Boston Globe


Stoner by John Williams, contains what is no doubt my favorite literary romance of all time. William Stoner is well into his 40s, and mired in an unhappy marriage, when he meets Katherine, another shy professor of literature. The affair that ensues is described with a beauty so fierce that it takes my breath away each time I read it. The chapters devoted to this romance are both terribly sexy and profoundly wise.
Christian Science Monitor


Williams didn’t write much compared with some novelists, but everything he did was exceedingly fine…it’s a shame that he’s not more often read today…But it’s great that at least two of his novels [Stoner, Butcher’s Crossing] have found their way back into print.
Denver Post
 

Stoner, by John Williams, is a slim novel, and not a particularly joyous one. But it is so quietly beautiful and moving, so precisely constructed, that you want to read it in one sitting and enjoy being in it, altered somehow, as if you have been allowed to wear an exquisitely tailored garment that you don’t want to take off.
Toronto Globe and Mail


One of the great forgotten novels of the past century. I have bought at least 50 copies of it in the past few years, using it as a gift for friends…The book is so beautifully paced and cadenced that it deserves the status of classic (Top 10 Novels).
Colum McCann - Guardian (UK)
 

Stoner is undeniably a great book, but I can also understand why it isn’t a sentimental favorite in its native land. You could almost describe it as an anti-Gatsby…Part of Stoner’s greatness is that it sees life whole and as it is, without delusion yet without despair…The novel embodies the very virtues it exalts, the same virtues that probably relegate it, like its titular hero, to its perpetual place in the shade. But the book, like professor William Stoner, isn’t out to win popularity contests. It endures, illumined from within.
Tim Kreider - The New Yorker
 

A masterly portrait of a truly virtuous and dedicated man.
The New Yorker
 

Serious, beautiful and affecting, what makes Stoner so impressive is the contained intensity the author and character share.
Irving Howe - New Republic
 

A quiet but resonant achievement.
Times Literary Supplement


It’s simply a novel about a guy who goes to college and becomes a teacher. But it’s one of the most fascinating things that you’ve ever come across.
Tom Hanks - Time


Stoner is written in the most plainspoken of styles…Its hero is an obscure academic who endures a series of personal and professional agonies. Yet the novel is utterly riveting, and for one simple reason: because the author, John Williams, treats his characters with such tender and ruthless honesty that we cannot help but love them.
Steve Almond - Tin House
 

A poignant campus novel from the mid-’60s—an unjustly neglected gem.
Nick Hornby - People


Williams’ descriptions of the experience of reading both elucidate and evince the pleasures of literary language; the "minute, strange, and unexpected combinations of letters and words" in which Stoner finds joy are re-enacted in Williams' own perfect fusion of words.
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The best book I read in 2007 was Stoner by John Williams. It’s perhaps the best book I’ve read in years.
Stephen Elliott - Believer