This was Waterstone's book of the year in 2013 and the quote on the front cover from the Sunday Times states it is 'The greatest novel you've never read'.

I've copied this review by Ann Fairweather from Amazon UK as I think this sums the book up perfectly:
The writing is incredibly beautiful, the kind that is so smooth, so fluid, that you forget you are even reading, reaching straight into the heart of the matter. It seems slightly incredible that such a good book could be about the very uneventful, sad life of a professor in an American university. You follow Stoner from his young years as a student and farmer, right up to his death, married, with an estranged daughter and a half-failed career behind him. It is somehow difficult to say how fascinating, gripping this book is, but it is. Stoner struggles to affirm himself as a formidable intellectual that he is in his field, because he is so self-effacing, so humble of character. You really wish him to take a more vigorous stand against his dreadful colleague who will undermine and ruin his whole life eventually. But at work like at home, with his very demanding, difficult wife, Stoner always chooses the path of least resistance, and lets his life ebb away...This attitude becomes near unbearable for the reader when it comes to the love of his life and yet again... He is a maddening character yet so real that you love him and desperately want him to be happy. There is certainly a lot of Stoner in us and why his story is so moving, so affecting. It also talks of an attitude to life that is the complete opposite of what we want now. It is about a very quiet character, and an inner life that does not need outside validations. It is about valuing the life of the mind above all else, even if it means renouncing happiness in other ways. It is about avoiding confrontations with loved ones even if it means giving-up your own rights. Stoner really is a great, great story, with a deep flamboyance, resonance very few novels possess.

Caught and reading... to be passed onto TeddysDen once finished.

Completed last week. I enjoyed the writing and the characters but nothing really seemed to happen and I don't really know why the author would want to write this novel. that being said I enjoyed it and was interested in the characters life to care and want to know what happened to him.

It's being sent on this week.

The book has just arrived in time - next Wendnesday the lecture on it starts, so that leaves me one week to finish the book - and I already started reading this morning when I had it in the malbox, wonderful, thank you for this gift!

Although I found Stoner introverted beyond compare..I read the last chapter today...heartmovingly intimate...the end actually put a tear to my eye - From the author we do not find a private thought by his wife or daughter. It is all from his perspective and there is hardly any gap between author and Stoner. Their daugther is used as a pawn between them and the outcome is not good. And there are gaps in the narrative which cannot be counted as stylistical vacancies, rather there are missing parts of the plot. But otherwise a readable story.

We did read Stoner at the University in St.Gallen with Alan Robinson...I actually read it to the end..and liked it...although the gaps within the text are actual missing parts...which we all agreed on..nevertheless a good read. Especially the end is heartwrenchingly moving..

Goes to spy-there, happy reading!

Thank you, manuma :)

What do I remember from this novel? It's about mediocrity, about the fear of mediocrity, about lost chances, wrong decisions, told through the hapless life story of William Stoner, an assistant professor of English literature. A moving, inexorably sad read which I don't want to read again, I guess.

It's in the English section of the shelf