"Milk Bread Beer Ice" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 11 Pages- Included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields

Buriedinprint.com 

 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.

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

"Milk Bread Beer Ice" is the 36th story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted.

Like numerous of her other stories this one is about a married couple in their late middle ages on a trip.

"Imprisoned now for five long days in the passenger seat of a brand new Oldsmobile Cutlass, Barbara thinks of herself as a castaway. Her real life has been left behind in Toronto. She and Peter are en route to Houston to attend an estate auction of a late client of Peter’s, a man who ended his life not long ago with a pistol shot. For the sake of the passage, admittedly only two weeks, she has surrendered those routines that make her feel busy and purposeful."

"Family Secrets" - A Short Sfory by Carol Shields - 15 Pages - included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2002,

 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.

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.

"Family Secrets" is the 33rd Short Story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted.  It in just 15 pages it follows the lives of a woman  from childhood to late middle ages.  It is narrated through remembrance of conversations. A central issue is why her mother took a year of sick from work prior to marriage.

"I’ve thought lately about that time of sickness; what kind of sickness is it that makes a young woman leave a job and go home to her parents for a whole year? The last time I saw Barclay I said to him, “I think Mom must have got pregnant that year she had to quit her first job.” It took him a minute to figure out what I was talking about. For a man so intelligent he has a poor memory for the details of our childhood. Once I tested him on the color of the garage doors we had at home in Maywood. “Blue,” he said. “No,” I shot back, “brown.”"

"Times of Sickness and Health" - A Short Story by Carol Shields -16 Pages- included in the Short stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 Buriedinprint.com 

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.

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.

"Times of Health and Sickness " is the 32nd short story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted.

"Many people resent advice, and Kay has never been able to understand this. A man she knows, Nils Almquist, a cataloger in the museum where she works, tells her that this resistance to advice is a Teutonic failing, that people from Mediterranean countries—Greece, Italy, Spain—routinely ask the advice of their friends and relatives before making a major decision."

Shields excels in laying out long lives in a few Pages.  As in numerous of her other stories, the lead characters do intellectual work, in this case as museum curators. They travel to Sardia as a long married couple.

The Carol Shields Literary Trust has biographical data and accounts of her novels

"Good Manors" - A Short Story by Carol Shields -5 Pages - Included with The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

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.

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 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." Penelopy Lively from her introduction to Stone Diaries by Carol Shields 

"Good Manors" is the 32nd Short Story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted.  I found it to be a disturbingly haunting work that in five pages tracks a ten year old child, almost molested by an older neighbour up to her sixties. She never marries and never forms an enduring relationship though she has brief encounters in which she is used for sex.

"THE STERN, PEREMPTORY SOCIAL ARBITER, Georgia Willow, has been overseeing Canadian manners for thirty-five years. She did it in Montreal during the tricky fifties and she did it in Toronto in the unsettled sixties. In the seventies she operated underground, so to speak, from a converted Rosedale garage, tutoring the shy wives of Japanese executives and diplomats. In the eighties she came into her own; manners were rediscovered, particularly in the West, where Mrs. Willow has relocated. Promptly at three-thirty each Tuesday and Thursday, neatly dressed in a well-pressed navy Evan-Picone slub silk suit, cream blouse and muted scarf, Georgia Willow meets her small class in the reception area of the MacDonald Hotel and ushers them into the long, airy tearoom—called, for some reason, Gophers—where a ceremonial spread has been ordered. Food and drink almost always accompany Mrs. Willow’s lectures. It is purely a matter of simulation since, wherever half a dozen people gather, there is sure to be a tray of sandwiches to trip them up. According to Mrs. Willow, food and food implements are responsible for fifty percent of social unease. The classic olive pit question. The persisting problem of forks, cocktail picks and coffee spoons."

To me the enduring questions are whatever are good manors really meant to do, what purpose do they serve and why did Gloria Willow make teaching good manors her life work.

"Collision" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 16 Pages- Included with The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 

"Collision" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 16 Pages- Included with The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

Buriedinprint.com 

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.

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 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." Penelopy Lively from her introduction to Stone Diaries by Carol Shields 

"Collision" is the 31st story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted, it perfectly exemplifies Penelopy Lively's description.

"Collision" is an amazing story, not just two lives created in 15 pages but the history of how movements of continents create biographies.

I wish to quote enough from the story to give a sense of her wonderful prose.

""TODAY THE SKY IS SOLID BLUE. It smacks the eye. A powerful tempered ceiling stretched across mountain ranges and glittering river systems: the Saône, the Rhine, the Danube, the Drina. This unimpaired blueness sharpens the edges of the tile-roofed apartment block where Martä Gjatä lives and hardens the wing tips of the little Swiss plane that carries Malcolm Brownstone to her side. What a dense, dumb, depthless blue it is, this blue; but continually widening out and softening like a magically reversed lake without a top or bottom or a trace of habitation or a thought of what its blueness is made of or what it’s for. But take another look. The washed clarity is deceiving, the yawning transparency is fake. What we observe belies the real nature of the earth’s atmosphere, which is adrift, today as any day, with biographical debris. It’s everywhere, a thick swimmy blizzard of it, more ubiquitous by far than earthly salt or sand or humming electrons. Radio waves are routinely pelted by biography’s mad static, as Martä Gjatä, trying to tune in the Vienna Symphony, knows only too well. And small aircraft, such as the one carrying Malcolm Brownstone eastward across Europe, occasionally fall into its sudden atmospheric pockets. The continents and oceans are engulfed. We are, to speak figuratively...

Where else in this closed lonely system can our creaturely dust go but up there on top of the storied slag heap? The only law of biography is that everything, every particle, must be saved. The earth is alight with it, awash with it, scoured by it, made clumsy and burnished by its steady accretion. Biography is a thrifty housewife, it’s an old miser. Martä Gjatä’s first toddling steps are preserved, and her first word"

"

"Block Out" - A Shorf Story by Carol Shields - 17 Pages - Included with The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 Buriedinprint.com 

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.

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.

"Blocked Out " is the 31th short story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted.

The story centers on a middle aged married couple from Ontario on a trip to Portugal. The man is a commercially successful writer of comic novels. For years prior to the death of his wife his current wife was his editor, loving him and his work.  

"THE WRITER MEERSHANK, vacationing in Portugal with his wife-cum-editor, Maybelle Spritz, became blocked. The two of them spent their first morning there exploring the coastal city of Porto, which is an airy gemlike city that, as Maybelle complained, had been severely underrated—given one lousy star in the Michelin Guide, that was all. This was plain crazy, a single star for a dozen broad sun-splashed terraces, for countless baroque churches, for the elegant iron bridges, and the lazy smoky river lined with pungent fishing boats and dark bars. Ridiculous! She was indignant. She slapped the green guidebook hard against her long thigh. Coming to Portugal had been her idea. She was the one who had thought of flight, of leaving the Ontario winter behind, who had persuaded and cajoled and weakened her husband, Meershank, and she was determined to unearth treasures for him hour by hour. Now this insult, this chintzy rating, a gorgeous city awarded one grudging star. “And just listen,” Maybelle said to Meershank, stopping in the middle of a steep, winding cobbled street to consult the despised guide. “We’re supposed to ‘note the gaily colored laundry flapping overhead.’ Laundry! I ask you. Never mind this incredible architecture all around us, we’re asked to gape at mended laundry"

Another marvelous story.

"Hinterland" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 20 Pages - included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 Buriedinprint.com 

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.

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.

"Hinterland" is the 30th short story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted.  The story centers on a middles aged married couple with two grown daughters.  One of the daughters has recently moved back home after a fight with her husband.  

"EVERYONE SEEMS TO HAVE STAYED PUT this year except Meg and Roy Sloan of Milwaukee, Wisconsin...Although both Meg and Roy are patriotic in a vague and non-rhetorical way, and good mature citizens who pay their taxes and vote and hold opinions on gun legislation and abortion, they’ve chosen this year to ignore the exhortation of their president to stay home and see America first. The Grand Canyon can wait, Roy says in the sociable weekend voice he more and more distrusts. The Black Hills can wait. And the Everglades. And Chesapeake Bay..."

They have decided to spend three weeks in Paris. 

"Over the years, in the seasonal rounds of business and pleasure and special anniversaries, Meg and Roy Sloan have set foot on most of the continents of the world: Asia, Australia, South America—and, of course, Europe. They have, in fact, been to Paris on two previous occasions...And now, in the autumn of 1986, an uneasy, untrustful time in the world’s history, the Sloans have returned. “But why?” quite a number of their friends said. “Why Paris, of all places!” .

Shields packs so much into twenty pages, a terrorist scare at a museum, exploring shops, dining, and an account of the dynamics of a marriage.

"Today Is the Day" - A Short Story by Carol Shields - 3 Pages - Included in the Short Stories of Carol Shields

 

"Today Is the Day" - A Short Story by Carol Shields - 3 Pages - Included in the Collected Short Stories of Carol Shields 

Buriedinprint.com 

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.

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.

"Today Is the Day" is the 27th Short Story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted.  It is among the briefest of her stories,  It shows the tremendous versatility of Shields.  "Today Is the Day" reads like an ancient folk tale.  Here is the opening:

"TODAY IS THE DAY THE WOMEN of our village go out along the highway planting blisterlilies. They set off without breakfast, not even coffee, gathering at the site of the old well, now paved over and turned into a tot lot and basketball court. The air at this hour is clear. You can breathe in the freshness. And you can smell the moist ground down there below the trampled weeds and baked clay, those eager black glinting minerals waiting, and the pocketed humus. A September morning. A thousand diamond points of dew."

As fitting for a folk tale we have our troll:

"All the women of the village take part in the fall planting, including, of course, scrawny old Sally Bakey. Dirty, wearing a torn pinafore, less than four feet in height, it is Sally who discovered a new preserve of virgin blisterlilies in a meadow on the other side of the shiny westward-lying lake. There, where only mice walk, the flowers still grow in profusion, and the bulbs divide year by year as they once did in these parts. Sally lives alone in a rough cabin on a diet of rolled oats and eggs. Raw eggs, some say. She has a foul smell and shouts obscenely at passersby, especially those who betray by their manner of speech or dress that they are not of the region. But people like her smile. A troll’s smile without teeth. In winter, when the snow reaches a certain height, the men of the village take its measure by saying: The snow’s up to Sally Bakey’s knees. Or over Sally Bakey’s bum. Or clear up to Sally Bakey’s eyebrows. No one knows how old Sally Bakey is, but she’s old enough to remember when churches in the area were left unlocked and when people could go about knocking on any door and ask for a chair to sit down on or for a cup of strong tea."

"Today Is the Day" is a brilliant work.

The Carol Shields Literary Trust has biographical data and accounts of her novels,

"Hazel" - A Short story by Carol Shields- 22 Pages - included with The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 

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.

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.

"Hazel" is the 26th story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted. Hazel is a recently widowed woman in her 50s with two married daughters. She has enough money to live comfortably but she feels bored now that she lives alone. Never having had a job, she applies for work as a kitchen product demonstrator. To her surprise, she gets the position.  

We follow Hazel as she advances in her career.

 My main purpose now in posting on the stories of Carol Shields is to keep a record of my reading.

"Chemistry" - A Short Story by Carol Shields - 20 Pages- included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 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.

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.

"Chemistry" is the 25th story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted,  it centers on a mixed group of music students who gather weekly for lessons.

It is told by a narrator whom we learn little personally about and addressed to an unknown person she refers to as "you".  Shields has a great talent for bringing people to life in just a few sentences.

One of the common features in her stories is inclusion of references to items from high culture. In "Chemistry" is is Mozart and Bach.

The Carol Shields Literary Trust has lots of data on her life and work.

"The Orange Fish" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 8 Pages - Included in The Collected Short Stories of Carol Shields - 2004

 

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.

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.

Like several of her other stories, in "The Orange Fish" in just a few pages Shields takes us into the dynamics of years of a less than perfect marriage. It also has a very strange intriguing ending.

"LIKE OTHERS OF MY GENERATION I am devoted to food, money and sex, but I have an ulcer and have been unhappily married to Lois-Ann, a lawyer, for twelve years. As you might guess, we are both fearful of aging. Recently Lois-Ann showed me an article she had clipped from the newspaper, a profile of a well-known television actress who was described as being “deep in her thirties.” “That’s what we are,” Lois-Ann said sadly, “deep in our thirties.” She looked at me from behind a lens of tears. Despite our incompatibility, the two of us understand each other, and I knew more or less what it was she was thinking: that some years ago, when she was twenty-five, she made up her mind to go to Vancouver Island and raise dahlias, but on the very day she bought her air ticket, she got a letter in the mail saying she’d been accepted at law school. “None of us writes our own script,” she said to me once, and of course she’s right. I still toy—I confess this to you freely—with my old fantasy of running a dude ranch, with the thought of well-rubbed saddles and harnesses and the whole sweet leathery tip of possibility, even though I know the dude market’s been depressed for a decade"

The Carol Shields Trust in a good source of information 

"Others" - 18 Pages - A Short Story by Carol Shields - Included in The Collected Stories of Carol Shields - 2004

 

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.

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.

"Others", one of the longer stories in the collection, is the 22nd story by Carol Shields I have so far read.  Begins with a recently married couple in vacation in France.  At the request of a stranger they cash his personal check for $50.  He sends them the amount to their address back in Canada and around  Christmas for the next twenty years he sends then a brief letter saying how he and his wife are doing.

Shields traces the peeks and vallies of the couple marriage. He becomes a doctor, they have children.  

"Others" is a   miniature masterpiece.

The Carol Shields Literary Trust has lots of data on her life and work.

"Salt" - A Short Story by Carol Shields 4 Pages - -included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

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.

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.
 

"Salt" is the 21st short story by Carol Shields upon which I have so far posted upon.  As Buried in Print has commented a number of the stories by Shields center on someone travelling, often a Scholarly authority of some kind. The central character, home based in London, is on a lecture tour through Canada.  We never learn what he speaks about.  In his ship in Manitoba there are six men in attendance, no women are allowed.

The speaker asks a minister present why Lot's wife was turned to salt.

"“There’s something I’ve been wondering about lately. It’s a biblical question, and perhaps you would be able to provide me with an answer.” At this the theologian looked mildly disoriented, and a bridge of bone over his eyes pushed forward. “Well I’m afraid my Bible’s a bit rusty—” “It’s just this,” Thornbury said. “Why was it that Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt?” “Disobedience, wasn’t it?” The theologian was vague, engagingly so, probing his salad with a busy fork. “She disobeyed God by turning and looking back at the burning city.” “Yes,” Thornbury said, “of course. But my question is, why salt? Why not limestone, for instance? Or marble?” “Salt is soluble,” someone pronounced, not very helpfully. One of the lawyers. “Highly perishable, a pillar of salt. Wouldn’t last long in this part of the world, not in the springtime, anyway.” “But in that part of the world where the rainfall—” 

There are open questions about speaker Thornbury's relationship with his wife.

"The Journal" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 4 Pages - Included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

"people sometimes take on a different persona when they travel" from "The Journal" 

"The Journal" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 4 Pages - Included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 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.

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.

"The Journal" is the 20th story by Carol Shields upon which I have posted. Her stories are often centered on people on a trip.  The idea this may allow people to escape briefly from the routines of their existence.  In "The Journal" a 40 year old married couple are in France.

"WHEN HAROLD AND SALLY TRAVEL, Sally keeps a journal, and in this journal Harold becomes H. She will write down such things as “H. exclaimed how the cathedral (Reims) is melting away on the outside and eroding into abstract lumps—while the interior is all fluidity and smoothness and grace, a seemingly endless series of rising and arching.” Has Harold actually exclaimed any such thing? The phrase seemingly endless sounds out of character, a little spongy, in fact, but then people sometimes take on a different persona when they travel. The bundled luggage, the weight of the camera around the neck, the sheer cost of air fare make travelers eager to mill expansive commentary from minor observation. Sally, in her journal, employs a steady, marching syntax, but allows herself occasional forays into fancy."

Harold has his own reaction to France:

"A quotidian quaff is the tickling phrase that pops into Harold’s head, and it seems to him there is not one person in all of Reims, in all of France for that matter, who is not now happily seated in some warm public corner and raising pleasing liquids to his lips. He experiences a nudge of grief because he does not happen to live in a country where people gather publicly at this hour to sip drinks and share anecdotes and debate ideas. He and Sally live on the fringe of Oshawa, Ontario, where, at the end of the working day, people simply return to their homes and begin to prepare their evening meal as though lacking the imagination to think of more joyous activities. But here, at a little table in France, the two of them have already gone native—“H. and I have gone native . . .”—and sit sipping cups of tea and eating little pancakes sprinkled with sugar. Harold feels inexpressibly at peace—which makes him all the more resentful that he can’t live the rest of his life in this manner, but he decides against mentioning his ambivalent feelings to Sally for fear she’ll write them down in her journal.   "

The Carol Shields Literary Trust has a very good biography 

"Home" - A short story by Carol Shields - 9 Pages, - Included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

"Home" - A short story by Carol Shields - 9 Pages, - Included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 

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.

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.

'"Home" is the 19th short story by Carol Shields upon which I have so far posted. In just nine pages Shields develops near life histories of several people on a plane from Toronto to London.

"IT WAS SUMMER, THE MIDDLE OF JULY, the middle of the twentieth century, and in the city of Toronto one hundred people were boarding an airplane. “Right this way,” the lipsticked stewardess cried. “Can I get you a pillow? A blanket?” It was a fine evening, and they climbed aboard with a lightsome step, even those who were no longer young. The plane was on its way to London, England, and since this was before the era of jet aircraft, a transatlantic flight meant twelve hours in the air."

We soon learn why a married couple are making the long flight:

"Ed Dover, a man in his mid-fifties who worked for the post office, had cashed in his war bonds so that he and his wife, Barbara, could go back to England for a twenty-one-day visit. It was for Barbara’s sake they were going; the doctor had advised it. For two years she had suffered from depression, forever talking about England and the village near Braintree where she had grown up and where her parents still lived. At home in Toronto she sat all day in dark corners of the house, helplessly weeping; there was dust everywhere, and the little back garden where rhubarb and raspberries had thrived was overtaken by weeds."

There are others.

The Carol Shields Literary Trust has lots of data on her life and work.

"Taking the Train" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 7 Pages - included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 

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.

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.

"Taking the Train" is the 18th story by Carol Shields I have read.  I have read this amazing story four times and still do not feel I am close to the depths of this work.  Like others or her works, the lead character has devoted much of her life to serious study.

"GWENETH MCGOWAN, THE DISRAELI SCHOLAR, was awarded the Saul Appeldorf Medal at a gala reception. She carried it home and put it in a dresser drawer under a pile of underwear. Her morale was high. Recognition in the academic world seemed assured, her rent was paid up for six months and, in addition, she had a number of good friends, some deserving of her friendship, and some not. “Dear Gweneth,” came a letter from Calgary, Alberta, where one of the deserving friends lived. “So! Now you’re famous! Well, well. Why not treat yourself to a visit—come and see me.”

First thought, why does she put the medal under her underwear?

We follow Gweneth on her visit,   to see her old friend, a widow whose husband was killed by a bear ((According to a news report in an eastern paper, the attack had been “provoked” by the ham sandwich he carried in the pocket of his jacket; such an innocent act, Gweneth had thought at the time, to carry a ham sandwich.) Her friend has a 15 year old daughter. The two long time friends begin to think about their lives long ago.

“A remarkable sky,” she said to Northie, and the two of them fell into a loop of silence that only very old friends can enter easily."

"Taking the Train", and nobody rides a train in the story, the meaning of the story is just an aspect of what makes this story so beautiful.

The Carol Shields  Literary Trust  has lots of data on her life and work.

"Invitations" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 4 pages- Included with The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 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.

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.

Buriedinprint.com

"Invitations" is the 17th story by Carol Shields I have so far posted upon.

"Invitations", told in the third person, is structured around five days in the life of the central character.  On each day the subject receives in the mail an invitation to a social event.  As the nature of the Invitations are revealed we learn she is a highly regarded author.

"There was to be a reception—a gala it was called—at the top of a large downtown hotel on Saturday evening. The guest of honor, she read, was to be herself."

I do not wish to share too much on this story.  "Invitations" is a four page marvel.

The Carol Shields Literary Trust Website has an excellent biography

https://www.carol-shields.com/biography.html

"Dolls, Dolls, Dolls, Dolls" - A Short Story by Carol Shields - 14 Pages - Included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

"Dolls, Dolls, Dolls, Dolls" - A Short Story by Carol Shields - 14 Pages - Included in The Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004 is the 16th short story by Carol Shields I have so far posted upon.

 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.

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.

Buriedinprint.com

"Dolls, Dolls, Dolls, Dolls" is, surprisingly enough, about dolls.

In the opening segment of the story a woman, middle-aged, reads to her barely interested husband a letter she has received from a friend of her childhood days. It concerns her visit  to a town which is the center of the manufacturing of traditional dolls.

""They were taken by air-conditioned bus to a village where ninety percent—the guide vigorously repeated this statistic—where ninety percent of all the dolls in Japan were made. “It’s a major industry here,” Roberta writes, and some of the dolls still were manufactured almost entirely by hand in a kind of cottage-industry system. One house in the village, for example, made nothing but arms and legs, another the bodies; another dressed the naked doll bodies in stiff kimonos of real silk and attached such objects as fans and birds to the tiny lacquered female fingers. Roberta’s party was brought to a small house in the middle of the village where the heads of geisha dolls were made. Just the heads and nothing else. After leaving their shoes in a small darkened foyer, they were led into a surprisingly wide, matted workroom that was cooled by slow-moving overhead fans. The air was musty from the mingled straw and dust, but the light from a row of latticed windows was softly opalescent, a distinctly mild, non-industry quality of light, clean-focused and just touched with the egg yellow of sunlight. Here in the workroom nine or ten Japanese women knelt in a circle on the floor. They nodded quickly and repeatedly in the direction of the tourists, and smiled in a half-shy, half-neighborly manner; they never stopped working for a second. The head-making operation was explained by the guide, who was a short and peppy Japanese with soft cheeks and a sharp “arfing” way of speaking English. First, he informed them, the very finest sawdust of a rare Japanese tree was taken and mixed with an equal solution of the purest rice paste. (Roberta writes that he rose up on his toes when he reached the words finest and purest as though paying tribute to the god of superlatives.) This dough-like material then was pressed into wooden molds of great antiquity (another toe-rising here) and allowed to dry very slowly over a period of days. Then it was removed and painted; ten separate and exquisitely thin coats of enamel were applied, so that the resulting form, with only an elegant nose breaking the white egg surface, arrived at the weight and feel and coolness of porcelain. The tourists—hulking, Western, flat-footed in their bare feet—watched as the tiny white doll heads were passed around".

In the second segment of the story the woman begins to think back on the importance of dolls to her childhood.

The Carol Shields Literary Trust Website has an excellent biography

https://www.carol-shields.com/biography.html

"Love So Fleeting, Love So Fine" - A Short Story by Carol Shields- 8 Pages - included in The Collected Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 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.

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.

Buriedinprint.com

"Love So Fleeting, Love So Fine" is the 15th story by Carol Shields I have so far posted upon.  It opens with a rather  man seeing a sign in the sign in the window of an orthopaedic shoe store, "Wendy is Back".  He does not know Wendy and wonders why her return should be of significance.  He begins to wonder where Wendy has been.  He then imagines that the clients of the store must have received tender and careful treatment from her.

"From North Winnipeg they came, from East Kildonan and Fort Garry and Southwood and even Brandon so that their warped and crooked and cosmically disfavored feet could be taken into Wendy’s smooth young hands, examined minutely and murmured over—but in that merry little voice of hers that made people think of the daughters they’d never had. Into her care they could safely put the shame of their ancient bunions, their blue-black swollen ankles, their blistered heels. Her strong, unerring touch never shrank when it came to straightening out crippled toes or testing with her healthy thumbs that peculiar soft givingness that indicates a fallen arch. By sheer banter, by a kind of chiding playfulness, she absolved her clients of the rasp of old calluses, the yellowness of soles, the damp dishonor attached to foot odor, foot foulness, foot obloquy, foot ignominy."

He concludes the story with some reflection on women he has loved.

The Carol Shields Literary Trust Website has an excellent biography

https://www.carol-shields.com/biography.html

"A Word" A short story by Carol Shields and Anne Giardini - 12 Pages - Included in The Collected Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

 "A Word" A short story by Carol Shields and Anne Giardini - 12 Pages - Included in The Collected Short Stories of Carol Shields- 2004

(Anne Giardini, OC, OBC, QC, is a Canadian business executive, journalist, lawyer and writer. She is the oldest daughter of late Canadian novelist Carol Shields. Giardini is licensed to practice law in British Columbia (and formerly in Ontario and Washington State). As a journalist, Giardini has contributed to the National Post as a columnist. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband of more than 30 years. They have three grown children. She has written two novels, The Sad Truth about Happiness (2005) and Advice for Italian Boys (2009), both published by HarperCollins. Giardini and her son, Nicholas Giardini, edited Startle and Illuminate (Random House Canada, 2016), a book of Carol Shields' thoughts and advice on writing. Giardini served as the 11th chancellor of Simon Fraser University from 2014 to 2020. Wikipedia)

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.

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.

Buriedinprint.com

"A Word" is the 14th story from The Collected Short Stories of Carol Shields upon which I have so far posted upon.  

The story focuses on three adult siblings in the Wood family, two brothers and a sister.  Their not too long ago deceased father, little mention is made of their mother is very much a factor in their lives.  As the story opens Ellen is preparing for a solo violin performance.  One of the brothers repairs guitars.  The family is very into a sense of being elite, depending the best from themselves.

The story makes brilliant use of the juxtaposition of family history to European history:

"Many generations of Woods had worn the gold necklace. Three Woods had been married in it. A Wood had worn it to a funeral mass for Czar Nicholas. A Wood had shaken the hand of the great Schiffmann while wearing it. A Wood had hidden it behind a plaster wall in the city of Berlin. Another Wood had carried it out of Spain in 1936 sewn into the hem of a blanket."

Here is the account of the start of the concert:

"Elke had just arrived in the wings when the lights were dimmed and the noise from the audience thinned to a softer sound. She stood, bent slightly forward, with one arm crooked around the violin and the bow held lightly in the opposite hand. Under the surprising folds of the costume, which she now realized smelled strongly of mothballs and dust, her body felt cool and determined. It seemed suddenly as though Papa were near—in the chamber of the violin or wrapped around the rosined strings of her bow. But she knew this was only an illusion stirred by the hard lights and the rising excitement. “He’s gone,” she told herself, looking down at the backs of her hands. “I’m sure of that, at least.”

The Carol Shields Literary Trust Website has an excellent biography

https://www.carol-shields.com/biography.html