A return to a favourite writer, sadly no longer with us, with a pair of novellas centred around short interludes in the lives of two Canadian sisters.
One is a tale in the domestic life of an academic biographer, unsettled by her husband's unconventional literary exploration of Milton, her childrens' drift into secretive adolescence, and her own guilt at abortive plagiarism.
The second tale picks up with her sister, a poet just about getting by as a typesetter for a botanical journal. An invite to attend her mother's unexpected wedding sends her on a cross-country rail journey with her new dentist boyfriend, entrusting her son with her employer and his wife. There, she meets up with her sister, and awkwardly bonds with her future step-father, while a serious situation from home bubbles up.
Neither sound promising in outline, but Shields’ writing is just so well-observed, and both are so engagingly written that they're great reads. Her attention to detail in her characters’ inner lives is simply fantastic, one really comes away from both feeling that you really know these people you've spent a few short hours with.
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