This year, Buried in Print, a marvelous blog I have followed for over ten years,is doing a read through of the short stories of Carol Shields. I hope to participate fully in this event.http://www.buriedinprint.com/
“Her stories have given me happiness, not just pleasure. They delight me at first by the clear and simple elegance with which they’re made. Then there’s something so bountiful and surprising about them, like the beautiful broken light of a prism.” —Alice Munro
The more I read in the stories of Carol Shields the more grateful I am to Buried in Print for turning me on to her work. There are sixty some stories in the collection,it is my hope to read and post on them all in 2024.
"Fitting Behaviour" is the 8th story by Carol Shields I have had the exquisite pleasure of reading.
The central character in "Fitting Behaviour" is a Canadian author of several novels. His wife of 35 years is dying a lingering death. He has had a romantic encounter with his editor. They have two adult daughters.
I will just quote a bit.
"SOME OF MEERSHANK’S WITTIEST WRITING was done during his wife’s final illness. “Mortality,” he whispered each morning to give himself comfort, “puts acid in the wine.” Other times he said, as he peered into the bathroom mirror, “Mortality puts strychnine in the candy floss. It puts bite in the byte.” Then he groaned aloud—but only once—and got straight back to work. His novel of this period, Malaprop in Disneyfield, was said to have been cranked out of the word processor between invalid trays and bedpans."
The Carol Shields Literary Trust Website has an excellent biography
https://www.carol-shields.com/biography.html
4 comments:
I have had this collection of short stories on my shelf for more than ten and probably fifteen years. I read all of Shields' novels, one after the other, in a row after I discovered the wonder that is this author many years ago, and I asked for her short story collection for Christmas but never got around to reading it.
Deb Nance- once I Finish the short stories I hope to also read her novels. Thanks very much for your comment
This story is one that I thought was going to be exceptionally difficult to read but, then, she works the wonder of her ending, and it's so much more than I was expecting (still sad, but other feelings too).
I also noticed this passage, as an example of how succinct she describes characters:
"Oh, how silently those two parents had moved about in their large square rooms, in winter wrapping themselves in shawls, sitting before pots of raspberry-leaf tea and making their / good-natured remarks about the weather, the books they were forever in the middle of, the tiny thunder of politics that flickered from their newspaper, always one day old."
That detail, of "always one day old" really struck home for me, underscoring the sense that, if you are moving through time with someone, the way you mark time as a couple is more important than the wider world's marking of time.
Thank you for reading along, Mel: it's great to have your company!
Buried in Print- have you also read any of the novels of Carol Shields?
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