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Find out moreCarol Shields was born and grew up in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. She was the third child of a sweet-factory manager and a schoolteacher.
After Hanover College, Indiana, she won a place on an exchange programme with Exeter University. There she found a more academic atmosphere, in which she thrived, and a Canadian engineering graduate student, whom she subsequently married.
Over the next ten years or so she moved around Canada with her husband, had five children, came back to England (Manchester) for three years, and wrote the occasional short story. Age twenty-nine, she wrote seven poems for a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Young Writers' Competition – and won. There followed a period of poetry writing, a master's programme in English at the University of Ottawa, a thesis on Susanna Moodie, a 19th-century Canadian fiction writer and two books of poetry, Others and Intersect. The week she turned forty her first novel Small Ceremonies, was published, her thesis was accepted for publication, and she was about to leave for a year in France during her husband's sabbatical. There she immediately started her second novel, The Box Garden.
She published two collections of short stories as well as six novels. Mary Swann was the first to be published in the UK in 1990, followed by Happenstance, which combined two earlier novels published separately, in 1991 and The Republic of Love in 1992. The Stone Diaries was published in August 1993, and was short-listed for the Booker Prize. It is now a bestselling paperback, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in April 1995. Various Miracles, a collection of short stories, was published to critical rapture in November 1994, and her first two novels, Small Ceremonies and The Box Garden, saw their first UK publication in February and June 1995 respectively.
In August 1997 her novel Larry's Party was published by Fourth Estate, and went on to win the UK's coveted Orange Prize for Women's Fiction in May 1998. A new collection of short fiction, Dressing Up for the Carnival, was published in February 2000. Her last novel, Unless, was published in the UK in 2002 by Fourth Estate and went on to be shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize.
Carol Shields passed away in July 2003.
A beautifully written book about a mother, Reta, struggling to cope with her eldest daughter’s decision to make herself homeless, choosing to live on the street and beg for money for charity. We follow Reta’s unravelling emotions through the relationships with the rest of her family and also through the new novel she is writing. This is not all doom and gloom, there are some laugh out loud moments but it is also a look at women and how they fit in to society today. Some interesting topics of discussion in this book so tell your book club to get reading.
Mary Swann, a latter-day Emily Dickinson, submitted a paper bag of poems to newspaper editor Frederic Cruzzi mere hours before her husband hacked her to pieces. How could someone who led such a dull, sheltered life produce these works of genius? Four very different people search for the elusive answer.
This won the Orange Prize for fiction back in 1997. We follow Larry through the maze (a subject on which he becomes very astute) of his life, his relationships, his work, physical changes – all is laid bare. A great novel told with surprising insight and clarity. A "Piece of Passion" from the publisher... Detailing the life of landscape designer Larry Weller from the late seventies through to the late nineties, this is a brilliant and hilarious insight into just how much the concept of ‘being a man’ has changed over such a short period of time. Seamlessly weaving together different episodes in Larry’s (seemingly very ordinary) life, in Larry’s Party Carol Shields excels in making the mundane seem magnificent. Spellbindingly intricate, completely original and sometimes ingeniously funny, this Orange Prize winning novel is a genuine modern classic.
Ein vielschichtiger, mit bissigem Humor geschriebener Roman uber den Literaturbetrieb und uber menschliche Wahrnehmungen und Wunschprojektionen von Pulitzer-Preistragerin Carol ShieldsMary Swann, eine Buerin, wird von ihrem Mann ermordet. Sie hinterlt eine Tte voller groartiger Gedichte. Wer war diese Frau? Wie kam sie dazu als einfache Frau solch vollendete Lyrik zu verfassen? Ein Symposium soll das Geheimnis lften, doch pltzlich verschwinden Mary Swanns Spuren ... "e;Einer der besten Romane, die ich in diesem Jahr gelesen habe - subtil, witzig, ergreifend, voller berraschungen und wunderschn komponiert."e; Margaret Atwood
First published in Carol Shields's acclaimed collection Dressing Up for the Carnival. A couple's life is thrown into utter chaos when The National Association of Metereorologists go on strike - what will they wear? What will they eat?First published in Carol Shields's acclaimed collection Dressing Up for the Carnival. A couple's life is thrown into utter chaos when The National Association of Metereorologists go on strike - what will they wear? What will they eat?
A couple buy a print to adorn their living room, but little do they know the power of their purchase.Fast Fiction: A selection of masterful short stories from 4th Estate short story collections, and the best talent from The Sunday Times authors, available to purchase as single story ebooks.Fast Fiction: A selection of masterful short stories from 4th Estate short story collections, and the best talent from The Sunday Times authors, available to purchase as single story ebooks.
Miracles do happen - but what is their significance?Fast Fiction: A selection of masterful short stories from 4th Estate short story collections, and the best talent from The Sunday Times authors, available to purchase as single story ebooks.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Governor-General's Award, and short-listed for the Booker Prize. 'The Stone Diaries' is the story of one woman's life, a truly sensuous novel which reflects and illuminates the unsettled decades of our century. Repackaged as part of the Perennial fiction promotion. This is the story of Daisy Goodwill, from her birth on a kitchen floor in Manitoba, Canada, to her death in a Florida nursing home nearly ninety years later. Through Daisy's life, Shields reflects and illuminates the unsettled decades of our century in this rich and poignant novel.
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