I love Carol Shields’ writing. If you do, too, this book is available in hardback at B&N for $3.95 for a limited time. The book is introduced by Margaret Atwood.
As part of the Short Story Challenge, I want to read 2-3 stories from this book per week. This will enable me to complete it before July 1 and count it for the Canadian Challenge.
The three stories I read this past week were “Segue,” “Various Miracles,” and “Mrs. Turner Cutting the Grass.”
Segue – Jane Sexton, chairwoman of The Sonnet Society, tells us about her life writing sonnets and living with her famous author-husband Max. It is also a story about dealing with aging.
Various Miracles – a story about everyday miracles or coincidences.
Mrs. Turner Cutting the Grass – While Mrs. Turner is cutting the grass, other people are thinking or talking about her. Is she better off being blissfully unaware, or is it preferable to know where one stands in the world?
I got this book awhile ago, and I was so surprised when I opened it and it had the very quote that I had used in my review of the Stone Diaries:
Something has occurred to her–something transparently simple, something she’s always known, it seems, but never articulated. Which is that the moment of death occurs while we’re still alive. Life marches right up to the wall of that final darkness, one extreme state of being butting against the other. Not even a breath separates them. Not even a blink of the eye. A person can go on and on tuned in to the daily music of food and work and weather and speech right up to the last minute, so that not a single thing gets lost.
Carol Shields died of cancer in 2003. She was a gifted writer, and I definitely plan on reading more, if not all, of her works.
Mrs Turner is a great story. I’m a big fan of Shields.
I’ve heard so much about “Mrs. Turner Cutting The Grass” yet still haven’t read it. I need to remedy that.
I’d really like to read more of Shields as well. I’ve only read 2 of her novels so far.
This sounds really good, I’ll have to get it. Thanks for the review.
I love Shields’s work, too and have read her book Various Miracles, a collection of her shorter stories. Glad you liked it.
Jan (in Edmonds)
Geat review Michelle. I read her novel Stone Diaries with one of the groups you host and enjoyed it, but didn’t love it. I think I will try some of her short stories one of these days.
Teddy