Sotah
Naomi Ragen, 2002
St. Martin's Press
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312570248

Summary
Beautiful, fragile Dina Reich, a young woman in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox haredi enclave, stands accused of the community’s most unforgivable sin: adultery.

Raised with her sisters to be an obedient daughter and a dutiful wife, Dina secretly yearned for the knowledge, romance, and excitement that she knew her circumscribed life would never satisfy. When her first romance is tragically thwarted, she willingly enters into an arranged marriage with a loving but painfully quiet man.

Dina’s deeply repressed passions become impossible to ignore, finding a dangerous outlet in a sudden and intense obsession with a married man, with terrible consequences. Exiled to New York City, Dina meets Joan, a modern secular woman who challenges all she knows of the world and herself.

Set against the exotic backdrop of Jerusalem’s glistening white stones and ancient rituals, Sotah is a contemporary story of the struggle to reconcile tradition with freedom, and faith with love. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—July 10, 1949
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Brooklyn College; M.A., Hebrew University
   of Jerusalem
• Currently—lives in Jerusalme, Israel

Naomi Ragen is the author of seven novels, including several international bestsellers, and her weekly email columns on life in the Middle East are read and distributed by thousands of subscribers worldwide. An American, she has lived in Jerusalem for the past thirty-nine years and was recently voted one of the three most popular authors in Israel. (From the publisher.)

More
Ragen’s first three novels, which described the lives of ultra-Orthodox Jewish women in Israel and the United States, dealt with themes that had not previously been addressed in that society's literature: wife-abuse (Jephte’s Daughter: 1989), adultery (Sotah: 1992) and rape (The Sacrifice of Tamar: 1995). Reaction to these novels in the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities was mixed. Some hailed her as a pioneer who for the first time exposed and opened to public discussion problems which the communities had preferred to pretend did not exist, while others criticized her for “hanging out the dirty laundry” for everyone to see, thus embarrassing the rabbis who were believed by many to be effectively dealing with these problems “behind the scenes” and also putting “ammunition in the hands of the anti-Semites.”

Her next novel (The Ghost of Hannah Mendes: 1998) told the story of a Sephardic family brought back from the abyss of assimilation by the spirit of their ancestor Gracia Mendes (a true historical figure), a 16th century Portuguese crypto-Jew who risked her life and her considerable fortune to practice her religion in secret.

Chains Around the Grass (2002) is a semi-autobiographical novel of the author’s childhood which dealt with the failure of the American dream for her parents.

In The Covenant (2004) Ragen dealt with the contemporary theme of an ordinary family sucked into the horror of Islamic terrorism.

The Saturday Wife (2007), the story of a rabbi's wayward wife, is loosely based on Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and is a satire of modern Jewish Orthodoxy.

Ragen is also known as a playwright. Her 2001 drama, Women’s Minyan, tells the story of an ultra-Orthodox woman who, upon fleeing from her adulterous and abusive husband, finds that he has manipulated the rabbinical courts to deprive her of the right to see or speak to her twelve children. The story is based on a true incident. Women’s Minyan ran for six years in Israel's National Theatre and has been staged in the United States, Canada and Argentina. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
Most non-Jewish and many nonorthodox Jews have a skewed view of what life is like in the Haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jewish communities. For the most part, these communities are viewed as one homogeneous stereotypical prototype. The result of this is that the diversity and vibrancy of the different communities tend to become blended into a monotone image. This distorted ideal is often found in literature. Naomi Ragen has written a number of books that look at the lives of Haredi women, and which do not adhere to the common stereotypical banalities. In Sotah, Naomi Ragen takes an honest and unapologetic look at the lives led by three sisters in one close-knit community. In this book she paints a portrait that is as varied as the players portrayed, and which shows both positive and negative aspects of the culture.
Rochelle Caviness - The Jewish Eye.com

Ragen's second novel (after Jephte's Daughter) revisits the insular world of ultrareligious Jews, focusing on the Reich family's three daughters and how they fare in the elemental rite of passage—marriage. In the Haredi community (made up of Jews who observe "the tiniest dictate of law" and have "boundless contempt" for all things secular), a matchmaker handles—and sometimes mishandles—nuptials based on dowry, piety and family ties, and only incidentally on love or compatibility. Harsh as these customs may seem, Ragen's detailed and thoughtful evocations of daily life in such an enclave offer insights into its members' beliefs. The drama centers on the Reichs' devout middle daughter, Dina, who tries to reconcile her desires and dreams within the confines of her narrow world. How she becomes a sotah (a woman suspected of adultery), her banishment from seeing her husband and young child, and the ultimate reconciliation of her strict faith with the meaningful aspects of a secular society form the heart of this very readable, but at times simplistic novel. Ragen is most successful when she tells the story from the vantage point of the haredi world, less so when her characters are secular Jews. A stronger work of fiction than Jephte's Daughter, the narrative holds the reader's attention throughout.
Publishers Weekly

Love-conquers-all genre takes on deep philosophical questions as Ragen (Jephte's Daughter, 1989) continues her exploration of orthodox Jewish life in this story of a woman accused of adultery—the sotah. The setting is the ultraorthodox milieu of Jerusalem, where the men study the Torah in yeshivas while their wives bear numerous children, clean and cook, and find outside work to supplement their meager incomes. Here, heroine Dina's struggle to be independent and still religiously observant provides the more profound concerns of a story that, despite its religious background, is basically your typically rosy fade-out into a technicolor sunset, with all problems—and they are not insubstantial—wrapped up in the last chapter. Dina Reich, the beautiful and dutiful daughter of Rabbi Reich and his remarkably energetic and saintly wife, yearns for love, for knowledge of a wider world than the narrow one she is confined to. A brief romance, ended because her family could not pay the requisite dowry, means that Dina must accept a husband chosen by the sect's matchmaker and approved by her parents. She marries good but painfully inarticulate Judah, a carpenter; bears a child; then, bored and lonely, begins a relationship with a more worldly neighbor. Though it's not consummated, religious vigilantes threaten her, and at their behest she flees to New York, where she works as a maid for a wonderful family, who, when she breaks down, do all they can to bring about the inevitable happy ending. Not only is Dina reunited with Judah, whose virtues she now appreciates, but she also finds a satisfactory compromise between the comforting security of religion and tradition and the more fulfilling aspects of sectarian life. Richness of faith and family lovingly.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The Sotah was a woman accused of adultery who had to go through a purifying ritual to prove her innocence, or ascertain her guilt. Read Numbers 5, 11-28. How do the events in Sotah parallel the biblical ritual? What is Dina Reich guilty of? Does she reach purification, or teshuva?

2. Female family relationships are very important in Sotah. Describe the relationship between Dina and her sisters, the girls and their mother.

3. Joan opens Dina's eyes to the greater world, but Dina open's Joan's eyes and her heart to many things this modern woman is equally ignorant of. Describe their relationship and what they teach each other.

4. In the beginning of Sotah, we encounter Dina Reich as a young girl. In the course of the story she matures and changes. How would you describe the kind of transformation that takes place in her?

5. The word "sift" describes a pivotal concept in Sotah. Can you describe when the word is used, and what it means in terms of the story?

6. Attempts to find Dina a husband without the use of a matchmaker result in disaster. Describe the positive role of the matchmaker in the haredi world.

7. Compared to modern Western rituals of dating and marriage, the haredi world seems very narrow. Can you see anything positive in the haredi customs?

8. Statistics show that haredi women have a lower life expectancy than their husbands do. What elements in the life of Dina's mother and her sisters do you think could lead to that?

9. Moishe writes Dina: "I guess being a Chasid is pretty good training " (for being a soldier). What does he mean? Do you agree with him?

10. The idea of "chesed" is very important in Sotah. What is "chesed?" Can you describe acts of chesed in the book?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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Glorious 
Bernice L. McFadden, 2010
Akashic Books
250 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781936070114


Summary
Glorious is set against the backdrops of the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the civil rights era. Blending the truth of American history with the fruits of Bernice McFadden’s rich imagination, this is the story of Easter Venetta Bartlett, a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer whose tumultuous path to success, ruin, and revival offers a candid portrait of the American experience in all its beauty and cruelty.

Glorious is ultimately an audacious exploration into the nature of self-hatred, love, possession, ego, betrayal, and, finally, redemption. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A 
• Where—Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
• Education—NYC Fashion College - Laboratory Institute of
   Merchandising; Marymount College, Fordham University
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York

Bernice L. McFadden is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels, including the classic Sugar, Nowhere Is a Place, (a 2006 Washington Post Best Fiction title), and Gathering of Waters in 2012.

She is a two time Hurston/Wright award fiction finalist as well as the recipient of two fiction honor awards from the BCALA. McFadden lives in Brooklyn, New York. (From the publisher.)

More
Bernice L. McFadden was born, raised and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the eldest of four children and the mother of one daughter, R'yane Azsa. Ms. McFadden attended grade school at P.S. 161 in Brooklyn and Middle School at Holy Spirit, also in Brooklyn. She attended high school at St. Cyril Academy an all-girls boarding school in Danville, Pa.

In the Fall of 1983 she enrolled in the noted NYC fashion college: Laboratory Institute of Merchandising, with dreams of becoming an international clothing buyer.

She attended LIM for two semesters and then took a position at Bloomingdale's and later with Itokin, a Japanese owned retail company.

Disillusioned and frustrated with her job, she signed up for a Travel & Tourism course at Marymount College where she received a certificate of completion. After the birth of her daughter in 1988, Bernice McFadden obtained a job with Rockresorts a company then owned by the Rockefeller family.

The company was later sold and Ms. McFadden was laid off and unemployed for one year. She sights that year as the turning point in her life because during those twelve months Ms. McFadden began to dedicate herself to the art of writing. During the next nine years she held three jobs, always looking for something exciting and satisfying. Forever frustrated with corporate America and the requirements they put on their employees, Ms. McFadden enrolled at Fordham University. Her intention was to obtain a degree that would enable her to move up another rung on the corporate ladder.

She signed up for courses that concentrated on Afro-American history and literature, as well as creative writing, poetry and journalism. She credits the two years spent under the guidance of her professors as well as the years spent lost in the words of her favorite author's, to the caliber of writer she has become.

During those years, Ms. McFadden made a conscious effort to write as much as possible and began to send out hundreds of query letters to agents and publisher's attempting to sell one of her short stories or the novel she was working on.

In 1997, Ms. McFadden quit her job and dedicated seven months to re-writing the novel that would become, Sugar. In May of 1998, after depleting her savings, she took her last and final position within corporate America.

On Feb 9th, 1999, her daughter's eleventh birthday (and Alice Walker's birthday—one of Ms. McFadden's favorite author's) she sent a query letter to an agent who signed her two weeks later and the rest is literary history!

Bernice L. McFadden also writes racy, humorous fiction under the pseudonym, Geneva Holliday. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
McFadden's lively and loving rendering of New York hews closely to the jazz-inflected city of myth.... [She] has a wonderful ear for dialogue, and her entertaining prose equally accommodates humor and pathos.
Gregory Beyer - New York Times

McFadden, in her powerful seventh novel, tells the story of Easter Bartlett as she journeys from the violent Jim Crow South to the promise of the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights movement. Along the way, Easter forms relationships with both products of McFadden's imagination and actual historical figures: Rain, the sensuous and passionate dancer in Slocum's Traveling Brigade, a troupe that traveled the backwoods “entertaining negroes”; Colin, Easter's husband, who is provoked by a duplicitous friend into assassinating the Universal Negro Improvement Association leader, Marcus Garvey; Meredith, Easter's untrustworthy benefactor; and many more, including poet Langston Hughes, pianist Fats Waller, and shipping heiress Nancy Cunard. McFadden (Sugar) weaves rich historical detail with Easter's struggle to find peace in a racially polarized country, and she brings Harlem to astounding life: “The air up there, up south, up in Harlem, was sticky sweet and peppered with perfume, sweat, sex, curry, salt meat, sautéed chicken livers, and fresh baked breads.” Easter's hope for love to overthrow hate—and her intense exposure to both—cogently stands for America's potential, and McFadden's novel is a triumphant portrayal of the ongoing quest.
Publishers Weekly

After her sister's rape and her mother's death of a broken heart, Easter walked away from Waycross, Georgia, and spent most of the rest of her life trying to walk away from pain and hate..... McFadden interweaves fiction with the historic period of the Harlem Renaissance in this novel about a woman's struggle against hate and disappointment. —Vanessa Bush
Booklist

Discussion Questions
1. Why did the author choose to name the protagonist Easter? How does her name relate to the story?

2. Describe the setting of Glorious. Why might the author have chosen to write about this time period and these places and events?

3. Why do you think Easter continuously chooses to walk away from people, places and situations instead of confronting them head-on?

4. McFadden chooses to incorporate historical figures in a fictional context. Who does she include? Does her portrayal of them match historical accounts?

5. What does the historical narrative of Glorious reveal about contemporary society?

6. The quest for love and acceptance is a key theme of Glorious. How does the author use the cast of characters to highlight the complexity of this quest?

7. The characters in Glorious are from different classes, backgrounds, and ethnic groups but they share may commonalities. What are some of those shared characteristics?

8. What imagery does the author use in the prologue to set the scene? Does this imagery appear again in the story?

9. Why is Easter attracted to Mama Rain and then later, Getty Wisdom? Do the two have common qualities that draw Easter to them? Did her husband Colin Gibbs have any of those same qualities?

10. In Harlem, Easter tells Rain that she was writing to "Keep a grip on life." At the end of the book though, when Easter has given up writing, does this mean that she has also given up on life?

11. The author presents many representations of friendship and relationships. Describe some. Which are most successful? Why do you think these relationships are able to endure?

12. The story begins and ends in Waycross, Georgia. Why did the author choose to close the story in a place that held so many bad memories for Easter? Is there symbolism in this?

13. Does Easter Bartlett obtain justice? What does she sacrifice in the process?

14. Why do you think that the author chose the quotations by T.S. Eliot and Zora Neale Hurston as the novel's epigraphs? What do they signify?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard
Richard B. Wright, 2010
HarperCollins Canada
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781554688357

Summary
In a quiet manor house in Oxfordshire, an ailing housekeeper by the name of Aerlene Ward feels the time has come to confess the great secret that has shaped her life—she is the illegitimate daughter of William Shakespeare, England's most famous playwright.

With a brilliant eye and ear for this rich period of history, Richard B. Wright brings to life the teeming streets of Elizabethan London and the seasonal rhythms of rural life in Oliver Cromwell's England as he interweaves the intriguing stories of the lovely Elizabeth, who allows herself to be seduced by a struggling young writer from Stratford, and her plain but clever daughter, who must live with the consequences.

As their lives unfold, secrets are revealed, love is found and lost, and futures are forever changed. Readers will be fascinated by glimpses of the young Will as an actor with the Queen's Men and, fifteen years later, as a world-weary but increasingly wealthy playwright—who may have had an unexpected daughter.

An engaging blend of invention and historical detail, and echoing the unmistakable style of the Bard himself, Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard confirms Wright as one of our finest storytellers. This unforgettable novel will delight the senses and touch the heart. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—March 4, 1937
• Where—Midland, Ontario, Canada
• Education—Ryerson Polytechnic Institute; B.A., Trent
   University
• Awards—Giller Prize (Canada); Faber Memorial Prize (UK);
   Governor General's Award (Canada); Trillium Book Award
• Currently—lives in St. Catherines, Ontario

Richard B. Wright, CM, is a Canadian writer who was born in Midland, Ontario, to Laverne and Laura (née Thomas). He graduated from Midland high school in 1956, and attended and graduated from Ryerson Polytechnic Institute in the area of Radio and TV arts in 1959.

Career
Wright worked briefly within local newspapers and radio stations as a copywriter before becoming an assistent editor for MacMillan Canada in 1960.

During Wright's time at MacMillan his first book was published, a children's book titled Andrew Tolliver (Later retitled One John A. Too Many). His first full-length novel was titled The Weekend Man which was written in eighteen months while staying at his wife's family cottage in Quebec. The novel was a critical success with reviewers praising Wright's versatility and ability to speak and create believable female characters.

In 1970 Wright returned to post-secondary and attended Trent University from which he graduated in 1972 with a B.A. Of English. In 1976 Wright had obtained a position at Ridley College, a private school, teaching English until his eventual retirement.

While having being nominated for several literary awards before, it wasn't until 2001 that Wright gained wide recognition for his award-winning novel Clara Callan which also lead to the republication of many of his earlier works. That novel went on to win three of Canada's major literary awards: The Giller Prize , the Trillium Book Award and the Governor General's Award.

Literary Themes
Wright's published works often touch specifically on the lives of ordinary people with a profound balance of both depth and sensitivity. Wright has often been praised as an author who creates believable characters with a voice that must be heard. The Montreal Gazette is just one of many reviewers who have praised Wright’s work to the lengths of stating that his 2010 novel, Mr.Shakespeare’s Bastard is “A masterful novel...[which] confirms his ability to evoke an authentically female sensibility.” The novel has continued to gain recognition and was described by the Winnepeg Free Press as a novel that "Draws us swiftly through the pages...."

Wright also provides a narrative of pure life to his settings and character backgrounds that have continued to give him wide recognition as a Canadian novelist. His novels have been, and continue to be, published all around the world. In 2006 Wright received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Trent University, and in 2007 he became a member of the Order of Canada Order of Canada.

Wright has been married to Phyllis Wright (née Cotton) since 1966. The couple has two sons, Christopher Stephen and Richard Andrew. He currently resides in St. Catherines Ontario where he writes full time and enjoys walking, reading and music. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
A writer of insatiable curiosity and intelligence who just happens to have perfect pitch for dialogue and nuance. These qualities have made Richard Wright one of Canada’s top literary talents and Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard yet another total delight to read.
Toronto Star


A masterful novel...[which] confirms his ability to evoke an authentically female sensibility.
Montreal Gazette


An immensely entertaining romp.... Lizzy’s story and Aerlene’s story are wonderfully funny and suspenseful and absorbing.... Wright is a gifted storyteller and in Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard he’s at his absolute storytelling best.
Winnipeg Free Press


Wright’s gifts as a novelist, notably here his ability to craft extraordinarily believable female characters, remain in full swing, as do his eternal interests, including his intense exploration of his characters’ interior lives.... Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard is a smartly paced, lively and Shakespearean story of the many-splendoured varieties of love.... Throughout this lovely novel, Linny, the plain daughter of a pretty mother, shows her resemblance to her father in everything from the cast of her brow to her insight into the human heart.
Maclean's

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard:

1. Did you enjoy the book's structure as it alternated among three different time frames: Cromwellian England of 1658, the London of 1587, and London 15 years later? (Did you occasionally find it difficult to keep "Lizzy's" story separate from "Linney's"?)

2. At the onset of the story, Liz says to Arlene, "From the beginning I had terrible judgment in men." How does this statement set expectations for the story that follows? What are the parallels in Arlene's life?

3. The novel gives us two glimpses of Shakespeare—through Liz's eyes and, 15 years later, Arlene's? Describe the way this novel presents Shakespeare—and the ways in which he changes from Liz's time to Arlene's.

4. What draws Liz and Will together?

5. How does Liz's low opinion of herself cloud her belief in Shakespeare's talents?

6. Why might author Wright have chosen to tell his story three steps removed—through Liz, who tells Arlene, who then tells Charlotte. Consider how Charlotte questions the story's accuracy after so many years. Talk about Arlene's response and how it relates to the nature of storytelling...perhaps to the nature of all art, even to history itself:

That is an uncommonly literal reading of events and, if I may say so, does a disservice to your intelligence. In relating anything, we only approach the truth; we are never exactly there. Moreover, does not another truth besides the factual lurk in any account of events? A truth perhaps far more important?

7. In what way is literature a substitute religion for Arlene? Why is Hamlet her favorite play—what themes does it explore that have meaning for her own life?

8. What does Arlene think about Shakespeare after their meeting? Does he know or suspect she is his daughter? In what way does Arlene resemble her father—inward and outward. How are her insights into the human heart like her father's?

9. What does Charlotte regret about her own upbringing? How do society's codes for women restrict her life...and the lives of all women?

10. How does Wright portray life for the majority of men's and women's lives in the late-1500s to mid-1600s—especially the contrast between those of Oxford Manor and the "wretched masses" crowding the streets of London. Do you find Wright's descriptions of clothing and the other minutiae interesting or tiresome?

11. In what way do the lives of the novel's characters parallel the lives of Shakespeare's characters?

12. This novel contains loss and sorrow. Was it too sad? Would you have changed outcomes in the book—as Linney says she changed the fates of many of Shakespeare's characters?

13. As a male, does the author write in a convincing female voice? Wright could have written the book about a young man—after all, the book's title is "bastard" not "daughter." Any thoughts on why he decided on a female heroine rather than a male?

14. What are some of the humorous parts in the book? If you're in a book discussion, read them out loud.

15. Talk about the role of religion and the various religious practices (both traditional and non-traditional) in this novel.

Finally, not a question but an observation sent to us from Ginger Megs in Australian—we thought you would find it interesting:

Tea wasn't in common usage in England until 1660 and then only by the fashionable rich; a servant girl as written about on page 5 of Mr Shakespeare's Bastard would not be drinking tea.

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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Collected Stories 
Carol Shields, 2004
HarperCollins
693 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060762049


Summary
With the profound maturity and exquisite eye for detail that never failed to capture readers of her prize-winning novels, Carol Shields dazzles with these remarkable stories. Generous, delightful, and acutely observed, this essential collection illuminates the miracles that grace our lives; it will continue to enchant for years to come. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—June 2, 1935
• Where—Oak Park, Illinois, USA
• Death—July 16, 2003
• Where—Toronto, Canada
• Education—B.A., Hanover College; M.A., Ottawa University
• Awards—Orange Prize for Women’s Fiction for Larry’s Party,
  1998; Pulitzer Prize for The Stone Diaries, 1995; National
  Book Critics Circle Award for The Stone Diaries, 1994


Carol Shields's characters are often on the road less traveled, and the trip is never boring. She has written about a folklorist, a poet, a maze designer, a translator, even other writers—appropriate professions in novels in which characters struggle to find their own paths in life.

Shields often focused on female characters, most notably in The Stone Diaries, her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel documenting the birth, death, and everything in between of Daisy Goodwill. Goodwill's story is told over a century, in various voices, featuring Shields's wry humor and her ability to convey what she has called "the arc of human life."

But don't pigeonhole Shields as a "women's writer." "I have directed a fair amount of energy and rather a lot of rage into that particular corner [of the] problem of men and women, particularly men and women who write and how women's novels are perceived differently from men's," Shields said in a 2001 interview. In 1997's Larry's Party, she swapped genders, writing from the perspective of a male floral designer who discovers a passion for mazes.

Unafraid to experiment with genres, Shields wrote an epistolary novel (A Celibate Season, coauthored with Blanche Howard), a sort of "literary mystery" about the posthumous discovery of a murdered poet's genius (Swann), and short stories (collected in Dressing for the Carnival and other titles). Though she often covered serious topics, she rarely did so without humor. Her novel of mid-life romance, Republic of Love, was called by the New York Times a "touching, elegantly funny, luscious work of fiction," an assessment that could be applied to the bulk of her work.

Shields changed her viewpoint yet again for Unless, but the circumstance was a tragic one. The book, which resurrects the main character from Dressing Up for the Carnival's "A Scarf," was written during the author's battle with breast cancer. "I never want to sound at all mystical about writing,'' she said in a 2002 interview, ''but this book—it just came out." Though not touching on her own illness, Shields did what she had always done—took her own questions and lessons, then used them to produce a story that speaks its own truth.

Shields passed away on July 16, 2003; she was 68.

Extras
From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview:

When asked what book most influenced her life as a writer, here is how she responded:

• When I was home sick as a child I used to take several volumes of the Encyclopedia to bed with me. We had a World Book Encyclopedia, which had quite a few pictures in color. I read the volumes randomly, browsing my way through them. I loved the hugeness of the world they confirmed for me, and the notion that that vastness could be organized and identified. You might think I would be humbled by the fact that people—individual intelligences—could become familiar with arcane material, but, in fact, I was deeply encouraged.

Here is Shields on were her favorite books (a fascinating list):

• Emma by Jane Austen. This book was written at the height of Austen's powers, when she felt secure in her footing.

• The Enigma of Arrival by V. S. Naipaul. The subject is so complex and the approach so original, that I didn't think he'd make it to the end, but he did.

• The Rabbit novels by John Updike. You might think of this as the four books it is, or you might see it as one long novel of the life of an American male in the middle of the 20th century. It is a great accomplishment, this emotional documentation of a human life and the other lives that accompany him.

• Independent People by Halldor Laxness, the Icelandic Nobel Prize winner. This novel has an epic range, looking at the world sometimes through a giant telescope, then concentrating with a magnifying lens on the rambling thoughts of one particular child.

• I love all the books by Alice Munro, who has given the world new ways of looking at the lives of women. She has, in fact, reinvented the shape of the short story.

• Possession by A. S. Byatt captures what many novels leave out: the life of the mind and the excitement of intellectual reflection.

• Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry. This book, published in the last year, is about family, about the delicacy and strength that weaves the family into a web.

• Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond made me believe (for about ten minutes) that I understood how the world was made. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Taken together, Shields's stories risk seeming like curiously weightless exercises—lightly parodic postmodern turns. Yet this eclectic bundle of fragments also serves to highlight her novelistic gift and heft. When Shields stitches together such vivid patchworks of lives in her longer fiction, she manages to convey the inadequacy, and also the urgent necessity, of words to give us a grip on our discontinuous selves—and a glimpse into the ultimately unknowable worlds of others. Shields's novels do tend to end happily. But they are also haunting because she has made us aware that ''the arabesque of the unfolded self'' (a very Shieldsian phrase from ''Absence'') is always a dance over an abyss.g
Ann Hulbert - New York Times Book Review


Shields, who died in 2003, was best known for her novels (The Stone Diaries; Unless), though she published three collections of stories over as many decades, here elegantly gathered and introduced by fellow Canadian and friend Margaret Atwood. Appearing first is her last unpublished tale, "Segue," about an aging couple in failing health-he a famous novelist, she a writer of sonnets-who grow apart as they take "responsibility for [their] own dying bodies." The story serves as a poignant tribute. Overall, Shields's touch is gorgeously light, her tales capturing brief, evanescent moments in the busy lives of couples, mothers and lonely wives. If a few entries seem too brief or lack development, "Hazel" demonstrates all the elements of Shields's mastery: an ordinary widow, perhaps too polite for her own good, finds a satisfying job as an itinerant kitchen demonstrator and discovers that her timidity and self-effacement can actually be turned to her advantage. From the same collection, the story "Collision" draws on Shields's extended travels and is set in a "small ellipsoid state in eastern Europe," where two lonely people of exotically different background and language collide on a rainy night; the story pursues a separate "biography" of each of the lovers with "every narrative scrap... equally honored." In "Edith-Esther," a story from Shields's last collection, the author prophetically portrays the eponymous protagonist, an 80-year-old novelist, as a "rare bird," pestered by her biographer for "some spiritual breeze" he can put into his book about her. She resists, but the biographer reworks her life the way he wants and in the end, to her dismay, refashions her work as uplifting—the last thing she intended it to be. Uplifting or not, this is a volume full of grace and wisdom.
Publishers Weekly


This author received wide notice during her lifetime, through both healthy sales and critical recognition, the latter including the Pulitzer Prize (for The Stone Diaries). This posthumous publication of her complete short fiction will be welcomed by her many readers and will provide a good introduction for those not familiar with her work. The collection opens with "Segue," the only story not published previously, in which a thoughtful woman maintains balance in the post-9/11 world by composing a sonnet every two weeks, one line per day. Writing's solaces and frustrations appear often: in the amusing "Absence," a sticky keyboard forces a writer to produce a complete piece without the letter i; in "A Scarf," a successful author learns an ironic lesson about being true to one's inner self. Many stories examine the quirks of everyday life, where mystery may lie just behind the ordinary ("Mrs. Turner Cutting the Grass," "Dolls, Dolls, Dolls, Dolls"). Others explore the seemingly minor domestic crises that can discombobulate relationships ("Accident," "Dressing Down," "Hinterland"). All depict distinctive moments in a variety of settings, with moods ranging from nostalgic to farcical. A moving introduction by Margaret Atwood honors Shields's life and writing. Recommended for most collections.—Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA
Library Journal


The collected contents of the late (1935-2003) Canadian author's three published story volumes. Various Miracles (1985) showcases Shields's affectionate scrutiny of marital and familial experience, in deft portrayals of a woman's life understood by assembling random "Scenes," a violinist who escapes through music her family's claustrophobic embrace ("A Wood"), a lengthy friendship traced through exchanged Christmas card messages ("Others") and a house-hunting couple's willed flight from the memory of a child's death ("Fragility"). The Orange Fish (1989) focuses mostly on women's imaginative responses to quotidian dilemmas, notably in the tale of a middle-aged couple's Parisian second honeymoon ("Hinterland"), which brings them separate visions of their individual and shared vulnerability and mortality. Shields's fondness for fabulism ("The Harp") and explorations of writers' lives dominates Dressing Up for the Carnival (2000), distinguished chiefly by revelations of how significant meanings inhere in mundane things (the title piece, "Soup du Jour"), and by the comic tale of a resolute nudist ("Dressing Down"): a rich story displaying the rangy inventiveness more prominent in her popular novels (the 1995 Pulitzer Prize-winning Stone Diaries, etc.). Shields the storyteller is a somewhat lesser writer, but she's always worth reading.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 
1. Carol Shields spoke of becoming a writer because there weren’t enough books that examined women’s friendships and women’s inner lives — or, as she put it, “the kind of book I wanted to read but couldn’t find.” In what ways does Shields’s fiction bring the lives of women to the surface, or into our understanding? What sorts of female experiences does she illuminate?

2. In her novels and stories, Shields often experiments with using different voices. The Stone Diaries shifts between first-, second-, and third-person narrative; one section of Larry’s Party is recorded almost entirely in dialogue; Happenstance is a novel in two parts, one narrated by the husband, one by the wife; the stories in Various Miracles come from a wide variety of narrative standpoints. Discuss point-of-view in Shields’s works, and the importance of telling one’s own stories — as characters or in real life. Also, what is the role of the writer in telling other people’s stories for them?

3. Though she’s lauded as a writer who brought the lives of ordinary people to the page and made them extraordinary, Carol Shields took some exception to the idea in one interview: “I have never known what ‘ordinary’ people means! I don’t think I quite believe in the concept.... There’s no one who isn’t complicated, who doesn’t have areas of cowardice or courage, who isn’t incapable of some things and capable of great acts. I think everyone has that capability. Either we’re all ordinary or else none of us is ordinary.” Discuss the role of ordinary life in Shields’s fiction. How do her above views come across in her writing? Is there a respect for the everyday that you don’t see in works by other writers?

4. Shields once commented that she’d often set up the structure of a novel, determining such elements as how many chapters there would be, and how long they’d be, before she even set out to write. “I need that kind of structure,” she explained. “[S]ometimes I change it. But mostly I don’t.... I love structures, and I love making new structures for novels.” Discuss the overall structures of different novels and how they relate to the content. For example, does Larry Weller’s love of garden mazes say anything about the twenty years of his life covered by Larry’s Party? What meaning can be found in the one-word chapter titles of Unless? How does Shields use, or even undermine, the biography format in The Stone Diaries?

5. “I'm concerned about the unknowability of other people,” Shields once said. “That's why I love biography and the idea of the human life told or shown. Of course, this is why I love novels, too. In novels, you get to hear how people are thinking. That’s why I read fiction.” How does Shields expose and often celebrate the inner lives of her characters? Can you find examples of characters who aren’t really known to those around them? How do their relationships suffer, or thrive, or even just survive, in the face of such distance?

6. How does what you know about Carol Shields as a person affect your reading of her books? Are you able to separate the author from her work? Do you feel the need to? What parallels can you draw between her approach to life and those of her characters? For instance, most of her main characters are women at mid-life, and many of her characters are writers or work in other areas of book publishing (translators, editors, etc.).

7. In interviews about Larry’s Party, Carol Shields commented more than once that men were “the ultimate mystery” to her. Discuss the male characters in Shields’s fiction — both those in prominent roles, like Larry Weller in Larry’s Party or Tom Avery in The Republic of Love, and the many husbands and lovers that seem to populate the sidelines of other stories and novels. How successfully does Shields portray the world of men in her work? Are there common characteristics you can trace between books? Are some of her male characters defined by the women they love? Or is it more often the other way around?

8. Many of Carol Shields’s works explore the ways individuals interact with their communities. Some characters are defined by their loneliness, while others struggle with their responsibilities to the people around them, whether it’s their family or a larger group. Discuss the roles of family and community in Shields’s fiction.

9. Carol Shields has always been well-known for her love of language, and its slipperiness. In what ways does her writing call attention to itself as writing? Are there particular stories or novels that you find playful? Or linguistically complex?

10. Author and literary journalist James Atlas, who edited the series for which Shields wrote her Austen biography, once said about Carol Shields, “she is our Jane Austen.” Compare Shields’s fiction to that of Austen — are there common themes or techniques? What other major authors would you compare Shields to, and why? Where does her work fit into our literary canon?
(Questions found on Barnes & Noble site.)

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