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Canada and the US lost a shared treasure yesterday.
Carol Shields died in Victoria, after a long battle with breast and liver cancer. Born in the US but having lived in Canada since she was 22, she described herself as having "a foot on either side of the border." Which resonates for me.
Carol Shields took ostensibly ordinary lives and made them compelling. In particular she captured the reality of middle class North American women, articulating their challenges and triumphs, in a world where they are too often devalued or mistreated. Three passages of her fiction still resonate with me. In "Dressing Up for the Carnival" (from the identically titled short story collection), where the voice of the protagonist is strong and vulnerable. From "The Stone Diaries" when, towards the end of the novel (which won the Pulitizer and Governor General's Awards, and was short listed for the Booker) we are given an inventory of all that Daisy Flett never experienced: one of only two pieces of fiction from the last 10 years that made me howl. The other--and my third choice--is the opening of "Unless" her most recent novel (shortlisted for the Booker, GG, Giller and Orange prizes):
"It happens that I am going through a period of great unhappiness and loss just now. All my life I've heard people speak of finding themselves in acute pain, bankrupt in spirit and body, but I've never understood what they meant. To lose. To have lost. I believed these visitations of darkness lasted only a few minutes or hours and that these saddened people, in between bouts, were occupied, as we all were, with the useful monotony of happiness. But happiness is not what I thought. Happiness is the lucky pane of glass you carry in your head. It takes all your cunning just to hang on to it, and once it's smashed you have to move into a different sort of life."
Wow. Wow.
More info about her here.
I'm so not happy
Carol Shields died in Victoria, after a long battle with breast and liver cancer. Born in the US but having lived in Canada since she was 22, she described herself as having "a foot on either side of the border." Which resonates for me.
Carol Shields took ostensibly ordinary lives and made them compelling. In particular she captured the reality of middle class North American women, articulating their challenges and triumphs, in a world where they are too often devalued or mistreated. Three passages of her fiction still resonate with me. In "Dressing Up for the Carnival" (from the identically titled short story collection), where the voice of the protagonist is strong and vulnerable. From "The Stone Diaries" when, towards the end of the novel (which won the Pulitizer and Governor General's Awards, and was short listed for the Booker) we are given an inventory of all that Daisy Flett never experienced: one of only two pieces of fiction from the last 10 years that made me howl. The other--and my third choice--is the opening of "Unless" her most recent novel (shortlisted for the Booker, GG, Giller and Orange prizes):
"It happens that I am going through a period of great unhappiness and loss just now. All my life I've heard people speak of finding themselves in acute pain, bankrupt in spirit and body, but I've never understood what they meant. To lose. To have lost. I believed these visitations of darkness lasted only a few minutes or hours and that these saddened people, in between bouts, were occupied, as we all were, with the useful monotony of happiness. But happiness is not what I thought. Happiness is the lucky pane of glass you carry in your head. It takes all your cunning just to hang on to it, and once it's smashed you have to move into a different sort of life."
Wow. Wow.
More info about her here.
I'm so not happy
