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"�� a quiet sadness for the common plight was never far beneath any moment of his living."

This novel damn near broke my heart. Come to think of it, it did break my heart. I’ve been picking up the pieces and trying to put them back together for the past eleven days since finishing it. I don’t know what else to say that hasn’t already been said about this exceptional piece of writing. We are William Stoner. Isn’t there a piece of him in every single one of us? We go about our lives with the best intentions. Looking for friendship. Searching for love. Thinking we’ve found it and then not exactly knowing what to do with it. Making mistakes and yet enduring. Sometimes doing battle but mostly resolving ourselves to our individual circumstances.

"The past gathered out of the darkness where it stayed, and the dead raised themselves to live before him; and the past and the dead flowed into the present among the alive, so that he had for an intense instant a vision of denseness into which he was compacted and from which he could not escape, and had no wish to escape."

This is another one of those contemplative novels that leaves me feeling like I’m in the presence of a wise soul. He or she speaks to me quietly but with an underlying urgency I cannot ignore. This soul is not showy but quite pure and simple. It’s achingly honest. I have to wonder though �� do we all necessarily damage one another? Do the effects of a hard life trickle down through the generations so endlessly? I hope not. Love, marriage, and parenting �� such challenging waters to navigate at times. Our best is never good enough. Perhaps we are the harshest judges of our own actions.

"Dispassionately, reasonably, he contemplated the failure that his life must appear to be."

It can’t get more depressing than that. Yet, there were glimmers of hopefulness and happiness that guided me through to the end of this book. Moments in time that make it all worthwhile. Love for literature and finding love itself. Loving a child. Do we really need an abundance of everything? There were some passages that really took hold of me and wouldn’t let go. I’m still in the clutches of Stoner’s (and John Williams��) words.

"Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know."

I’ve always been able to relate to that. Sitting surrounded by our massive piles of books, we can all empathize, I’m sure.

"�� 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."

It kind of makes you want to fall in love all over again, doesn’t it?!

I don’t know why I waited so long to read this novel. I knew I would love it. This was the first book I picked up on the first day of the new year, new decade. I wouldn’t be surprised if it remains my favorite of the year.