John Williams’s Stoner is available on Audible as a 9 hrs 46 mins unabridged audiobook, narrated by Robin Field.
Publisher’s Summary
William Stoner is born at the end of the 19th 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, far 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.
Audiobook Details
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 9 hrs 46 mins
- Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
- Release year: 2010
- Audible category: Literature & Fiction / Classics / Literature & Fiction
Listener Ratings
Stoner holds an average listener rating of 4.4/5 from 5523 Audible ratings.
On Audible, ratings for this title break down into narration performance and story separately:
- Performance (narration): 4.5/5
- Story: 4.4/5
- 5-star ratings: 64% of all ratings
What Audible Listeners Are Saying
5/5 stars — “A story of sadness and serenity”
If ever I have read a book that moved me gently but to tears, that would be ‘Stoner’. Akin to Stoner’s happy days, I regretted the book ending so soon, but it could not come to a close at a better moment and the sadness that you will feel is going to be an acute one, which I surmised coming in waves and not continuously humming at the same pitch in ‘Stoner’; the sadness will lap gently against you, you will be carried away. While pleasant dryness permeates Williams’s writing, with the narrator’s voice being attuned to it, there is little chance anyone could ever call it bland. If anything, this dryness intensifies complex emotions that the story evokes by acting as a counterweght, by keeping things mild, not overpronouncing them.<br/><br/>I hope you appreciate this book and if you do, you can try "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers that is of a similar sentiment.— Anton, Audible listener
3/5 stars — “What a Depressing Life!”
I found this book to be interesting to a degree, and I cared enough about William Stoner to want to finish it. Imagine a boring, depressing life. Then ask a friend to help you make it more boring and depressing. That’s Stoner’s life.— Wolfpacker, Audible listener
5/5 stars — “Not with a bang, but a whimper…”
Here’s a scary story for you. Not one with fictional creatures or supernatural occurrences, but instead, a novel that details all the quiet miseries and disappointments we work-a-day stiffs endure throughout the course of a lifetime. It is not an escape, but a story that forces you to confront the choices you have made in your own life. The writing is done with great care and intelligence, so that the reader gets the sense that WIlliams truly knows this academic world and its inhabitants.<br/> <br/>Stoner is so unsettling in its description of family and work life that I think we could cure the earth’s overpopulation problem if this book became mandatory reading in the eighth grade.— Thomas More, Audible listener
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