'In all of her fiction, Carol Shields excels at character creation. She conjures up a character in a few lines of dialogue, in a pungent authorial aside." Penelope Lively
This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,will be doing a read through of the short stories of Carol I hope to participate fully in this event.
http://www.buriedinprint.com/
"Mrs Turner Cuts the Grass" is the third story by Carol Shields I have so far read, I like her work so much I am planning to do a post on all 60 of the stories in the collection.
This story begins with a 19 year old woman being, in 1930, expelled from the family home for having an affair with a married man. She left her small town birthplace and travelled to New York City.
"The journey was endless and wretched, and on the way across Indiana and Ohio and Pennsylvania she saw hundreds and hundreds of towns whose unpaved streets and narrow blinded houses made her fear some conspiratorial, punishing power had carried her back to Boissevain. Her father’s soppy-stern voice sang and sang in her ears as the wooden bus rattled its way eastward. It was summer, 1930. New York was immense and wonderful, dirty, perilous and puzzling."
The story ends nearly 50 years later, back in her home town, a widow, mowing her yard,
I do not wish to relay much of the plot. Along with her siblings she begins to travel the world. There is an interlude concerning a poet they meet.
The Carol Shields Literary Trust Website has an excellent biography
https://www.carol-shields.com/biography.html
I remembered Mrs. Turner as being my favourite story from Various Miracles, so I was a little nervous to revisit it...I've read hundreds of stories, since, and maybe it wouldn't hold up...but it does, oh, it does. There's so much to this character that's invisible to her neighbours who see her cutting the grass, but Carol Shields shows us behind the curtain and we appreciate just how much she's been through.
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