Carol Shields: Collected stories

So you think short stories aren't your thing? Have you tried Carol Shields? She is better known for her novels, such as The Stone Diaries, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. But these stories are so thoughtful, exquisite and haunting that it's easy to keep turning the pages. This chunky paperback brings together Shields' three short-story collections, plus several other stories including Segue, her last work before she died in 2003.

Shields confides in her readers, chats to us as though we are old friends, lets us into the secrets of her characters' inner lives. She frequently uses an omniscient viewpoint, which allows her the freedom to jump around between characters, between continents. Occasionally, she goes off on tangents and the story does a complete turnaround.

Themes rise and recede through the collection like tides in an ocean of family: women trying to fill the spaces in their sagging marriages, holidaying couples being confronted by strange events, the ties and loyalties of sibling relationships.

Writers are disproportionately represented among the characters, and Shields pokes wry fun at them. There is a satirical story about an academic who talks about "narrative enclosures" and "fictive modules" over the top of a strong emotional subtext. There is a humorous novelist, Meershank, who is suddenly gripped by writer's block, and finds pleasure in it. There is a first-time author on tour, whose reunion with an friend from a writers' group has unexpected consequences.

Shields conveys the human goodness in everyone, even while describing their flaws. Take Mrs Turner Cutting the Grass, for example. Her organic neighbours cast judgements on the way Mrs Turner does her gardening; the teenage girls walking past are horrified that she exposes her cellulite by wearing shorts — "At her age. Doesn't she realise?" — and a professor of English from Massachusetts writes a patronising poem about Mrs Turner, whom he encountered on tour in Japan: "She of the pink pantsuit, the red toenails, the grapefruity buttocks, the overly bright souvenirs." Yet Mrs Turner emerges as the heroine of this story, a happy human being who takes life as it comes.

Shields' writing is layered and subtle and invites re-reading. Every word seems carefully chosen, yet the effect is a seamless narrative, some stories even apparently flowing on into each other. Highly enjoyable.

* Philippa Jamieson is a Dunedin writer.
* Harper Collins, $29.99