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Ladataan... Dressing Up for the Carnival (2000)Tekijä: Carol Shields
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Kirjaudu LibraryThingiin nähdäksesi, pidätkö tästä kirjasta vai et. Ei tämänhetkisiä Keskustelu-viestiketjuja tästä kirjasta. My favourite of these stories were Scarf and Weather, the latter I found quite amusing. I was reading this as a fill in while awaiting a library book and I struggled to engage with many of the stories. An overall disappointing read from this writer. I have actually since traded this book. ( ) I kept putting off reading this book. I'd pull it out and look at it and then move on to something else. I used to not like short fiction very much but then I've been reading Alice Munroe and Gabrielle Roy and some other writers whose short stories I really enjoyed. So I thought it was time to pull this one out and read it. Well, except for a couple of stories, this book is not one that is going to go down as an exceptional find for short fiction. I know how well Carol Shields can write. I've read and really enjoyed many of her novels. But she's not going to be the writer that makes me change my mind permanently about short fiction. The one story that I thought really stood well on its own is the second in the book "The Scarf". It's about a woman who is a writer who goes on a short book promotion tour and finds she has enough time to hunt through boutiques to find a scarf for her daughter. She looks and looks and finally finds the perfect one. Later she is having lunch with an old friend who is going through some tough times and she tells her the story of looking for the scarf but doesn't tell her it is for her daughter. The friend thinks she has bought the scarf for her. I thought the story was very thoughtfully developed and the ending is a surprise and yet something I could see happening to myself. The other story I liked was Windows which is about a married couple who are artists. The government has decided to tax window area and they decide to board up all their windows so they don't have to pay the tax. This seriously affects them because they paint in their home and now they have no natural light. Then one day the wife decides to paint a mural on the wood covering the window. Before she knows it she is starting to paint a window on the piece of wood. But she can't get the look of the glass right so she goes to bed to sleep on it. Her husband, who has taken to painting during the night, starts to work on the mural so when she gets up in the morning the painting has changed and the glass looks better. Together they finish the painting which, when they are done, is a very lifelike window. Each story is a little dive into her genius. I read this book about a year ago, and even though I can't remember each story individually, I recognized portions of one story while reading Unless just last month (which I found out later she included intentionally). Shields had an amazing ability to see the fascinating detail in ordinary people.
I don't mean to be reductive. There is much more in these stories, expressed more beautifully, with ambiguity, nuance, subtext, play. But for me, the thrill of this book is the idea that we choose our attitudes the same way as we choose what to don each morning, before we choose to join the crowds in the street.
"Le Carnaval du quotidien", the French version of "Dressing up for the Carnival", is the third and final collection of short stories by Carol Shields. Shields' short stories reveal the playfulness and fertile imagination of this great lady of Canadian literature. A meteorologists' strike causes a total suspension of the climate (Acclimatement). The government introduces a tax on windows that encourages the population to retreat into darkness by covering all the glassy surfaces of the houses (Windows). Stop! deals with the reclusion of a queen who is allergic to everything, even the march of time. Reportage looks at the discovery of a Roman amphitheatre in Manitoba that is transforming the local economy. We also meet Titus, a shepherd from antiquity, who invents daydreaming in the short story Invention. From one short story to the next, the reader is invited into Shields' world where life is a spectacle and everyday life is neither mundane nor ordinary. Kirjastojen kuvailuja ei löytynyt. |
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Google Books — Ladataan... LajityypitMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Kongressin kirjaston luokitusArvio (tähdet)Keskiarvo:
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