I didn’t choose this book, it was a gift, hence it’s not perhaps the type of book I would usually read. However I have to say I did keep turning the pages. It doesn’t really have a strong narrative, more the ongoing musings of Reta the main protagonist as she goes through a period of her life including the “loss” of someone close to her, and her ongoing career as a budding author. However the descriptions of the characters, and small details of their lives are beautifully done. I felt the internalised thoughts of Reta about why her daughter had “dropped out of life” and started living on the street didn’t really say a lot to me and the eventual resolution seemed a bit abrupt and perhaps forced. Overall though, worth consuming, and also in this day of 700 page novels it was nice to have something more brief and concise. I would consider another of Carol Shields books.

This is an startling, sweet novel… if you have read some of Shields’ other books. Having become familiar with the fumbling desires and inadequacies of her characters through Larry’s Party and The Stone Diaries, I think I was ready to embrace this book (not least because I just moved to Toronto, and there’s much to the intersection of Bloor and Bathurst here). That being said, if you have, it will leave you breathless with its spare wisdom and almost wondrous, dire cynicism and hope.

A really good book, that is to say.

Could this woman ever turn a phrase. Amazing prose. She is filled with insight into people, their motivations, nuances and psychology. Can I leave you with an excerpt? She describes her old house:

“I can imagine Lillian/Dorothy/Ruth standing at this sink, cutting wax beans into one-inch pieces and covering them with water, sighing and looking at the clock. Almost suppertime. The clock-post-war plastic-would have been shaped like a teapot or a frog. She is a woman of about my size and age, a medium frame, still slim, but widening at the hips. Middle forties with a lipsticked pout. Some essence has deserted her. A bodily evaporation has left her with nothin but hard, direct questions aimed in the region of her chest, and no one would ever suspect that she might be capable of rising to the upper ether of desire, wanting, wishing.”

Amazing!