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55th out of 81 books
—
3 voters
Happenstance: Two Novels in One About a Marriage in Transition
These two unique novels tell the stories of Jack and Brenda Bowman during a rare weekend apart in their many years of marriage. Jack is at home coping with domestic crises and two uncouth adolescents, while immobilized by self-doubt and questioning his worth as a historian. Brenda, travelling alone for the first time, is in a strange city grappling with an array of emotion
...morePaperback, 416 pages
Published
March 1st 1994
by Penguin Books
(first published 1980)
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I've read The Wife's Story and quite enjoyed it. I liked reading about the quilts and found the convention conversations interesting and not a little humourous.
The conventioneer the wife meets really annoyed me; I thought that he was really corny! However I'm not saying the character was unrealistic...
I'm going to read something else in between the books as I started The Husband's Story and found I need a break between the two.
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I found the husband's story more interesting than the wife's, t...more
The conventioneer the wife meets really annoyed me; I thought that he was really corny! However I'm not saying the character was unrealistic...
I'm going to read something else in between the books as I started The Husband's Story and found I need a break between the two.
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I found the husband's story more interesting than the wife's, t...more
I love Carol Shields. So, when I saw this at the used bookstore, I snapped it up. As always, Carol touches on relationships with finesse and subtlety. There's a bit of a gimmick in that the book is told from two points of view of a marriage: one half is the wife's, the other her husband's. Both are of the same period of time when Brenda, the wife, travels to Philadelphia for a conference, leaving Jack at home with the kids. I think you can pick which you read first, although the true cover is Br...more
I liked Carol Shields' The Stone Diaries so much that I had to read this book, but it did not mean as much to me. Maybe that's because I'm not as interested in an exploration of happenstance as I would be in an exploration of intent. Still, I enjoyed reading this. And happenstance happens.
Here's a passage I liked:
But anything can break the fragile arc of fortune, anything. There are casualties everywhere; Brenda is always running into them or hearing about them. She has been one of the lucky on...more
Here's a passage I liked:
But anything can break the fragile arc of fortune, anything. There are casualties everywhere; Brenda is always running into them or hearing about them. She has been one of the lucky on...more
Rather than reading the wife's story and then the husband's story (or vice versa), I read a few chapters of one and then a few chapters of the other, back and forth, until I reached the end. I'm glad I read it this way because I enjoyed comparing what each was doing/thinking at roughly the same point in time. Shields writes both dialogue and interior thought very well. Her characters, especially Jack and Brenda, feel completely alive and well fleshed out. She makes seemingly ordinary lives inter...more
I am interested to see that most people have read the entirety of one spouse's story and then the next, whilst I am interleaving them - reading a few chapters of one, then flipping the book to read the other's timeline. I am enjoying the differences in their paralleled lives, and I feel that the clever contrasts in Shield's writing, in vocabulary and focus, attitudes and narrator reliability are enhanced by reading in this way.
Finished. Felt an odd loyalty towards Brenda, based purely on gender,...more
Finished. Felt an odd loyalty towards Brenda, based purely on gender,...more
Jan 16, 2013
Hannah Baker
added it
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10/9-10/15
part 5/16 of my Last 16 Weeks of 2011 Project
10/11 - Finished the Husband's Story (194 pages) [Wife's Story read in 2010) - It ended so great! I should have quickly read this right after Wife's Story and that is my recommended order to read them in.
This is basically the most Carol Shields of her books: the inner life(/light), the diy craftsian perspective of the world, the writer grappling with originality and inspiration and how those things relate to family and friends, and the symbi...more
part 5/16 of my Last 16 Weeks of 2011 Project
10/11 - Finished the Husband's Story (194 pages) [Wife's Story read in 2010) - It ended so great! I should have quickly read this right after Wife's Story and that is my recommended order to read them in.
This is basically the most Carol Shields of her books: the inner life(/light), the diy craftsian perspective of the world, the writer grappling with originality and inspiration and how those things relate to family and friends, and the symbi...more
Feb 10, 2011
Maggie
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
idiot-s-guide-literary-fiction,
fiction
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This book was a delightful surprise. It closely meets my criteria for an enjoyable book/movie in being the story of basically dull people to whom nothing much happens - in other words, people like me who are changed by life events. The book is set during one week in 1978 (book was published in 1980) in a Chicago suburb. In a rather hokey fashion that I liked, the book is divided into two parts - one related by the wife and one by the husband. You read one part and then turn the book upside down...more
I really like the way Carol Shields writes. She elevates ordinary activity, ordinary life in such a way that you really care about her characters. This book is two, one from the point of view of a wife and the other (by turning the book upside down and opening from the other side) from the point of view of a husband. Shields doesn't describe the same events from two perspectives, just the same period of time. This is not a book of murders and car chases. I recommend it.
Carol Shields (along with fellow female Canadian writers Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro) is one of my favorite novelists. This book was written more than a decade before her acclaimed "The Stone Diaries" but has similar literary writing style and insightful descriptions of characters. She also wickedly skewers social mores of the 1970s. The book is comprised of 2 novellas that look at a marriage from different angles, one told by the wife and one by the husband.
I'm thoroughly enjoying this double novel. I chose the husband's side of the book first, in part to see if Carol Shields captured a genuine male voice as beautifully as she did in Larry's Party. She did! I'm now half way through the wife's side, and as with all books by Shields, the imagery she evokes is more vivid to me than with almost any other author. I know these people she writes about. I have met them.
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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Catching up with a big backlog of read books, hence very short writeups.
This is two separate stories The Wife's Tale and The Husband's Tale set during the same period of time. It wasn't anything like I thought it was going to be. They are really quite loosely joined pieces and weren't originally published as a set.
Few authors write with the clarity and utter believability of the characters, but Carol Shields is one who does. In this book she writes from the male and female perspective, a week in their lives, and in that time you explore the foundations and development of that relationship and marriage, the luck and paths taken.
Interesting premise...essentially two books in one, where you learn what happens during five days that a married couple spends away from each other, from each of their perspectives. The focus on domestic minutiae irritated me occasionally, and I didn't really love either character.
I recommend reading The Husband's Story first, though you could go either way.
I recommend reading The Husband's Story first, though you could go either way.
There's a gimmic - two stories, one husband, one wife, and you gotta flip the book to flip between them. But it's great - in a way the second story no matter which you read first is the best, because you know what's going on on the other side. Takes place in the late-70's in Chicago, rawsome in setting and mood.
I love Carol Shields' books. She was such a great author, writing about ordinary things in an inordinary simple way. This book is about a married couple spending a few days apart. In that very short time, they uncover who they really are; sometimes quite different from their youth.
The two stories tell so much about perspective, reliance / relationships and inter fumblings of the 'getting through life.' Shield's is quietly powerful. Taken the mundane and seemingly non-trendy 'blah' every day aspects of life and making vivid pictures and statements without being obvious.
This is fun concept, as it tells from a woman's point of view what occurs one winter weekend in the 1980s when she goes away to a craft conference. Flip the book over, and it tells the husband's point of view of the events of that same weekend.
I think what people call a gimmick with Carol Shields, they would call stylistic genius if her name were Philip Roth.
Loved the dual perspective. Carol Shields is already so perceptive, and the two sections deepened this.
Loved the dual perspective. Carol Shields is already so perceptive, and the two sections deepened this.
Really clever concept and wonderful book about communication dn the lack of it between couples, friends and acquaintances. Nothing of huge import happens but you feel really involved in both sides of the story
this has been on my shelf forever so I finally took the plunge. I really liked it, although I thought the wife's half was far more interesting. I wonder if men would have the opposite reaction.
An interesting way to tell the story ... one half of the book is by the wife, and the other half by the husband ... and the book itself is printed so that you can start with either one.
A- Two novels told from different POV - one from the wife's, one from the husband's - about what happens during one woman's trip away from home. Really great writing; I love Carole Shields!
The most difficult choice I had was how to read the book. Hubby suggested read one chapter from him and the one from her. I recommend it. Powerful book.
My favorite read of 2002. It's the story of the daily happenings in a marriage told both from the husband and the wife's points of view.
I enjoyed reading the story from two different perspectives, and I wonder if it would have changed my reading to swap the order. Carol Shields has a realistic narrative style, but I wanted more of an outcome from the characters' ponderings.
Great literary craft. Loved it for the characters, the style and the way she leaves the reader in awe of her talent.
Remember that there are always three sides to a story. His, hers and the truth. Well executed viewpoint writing.
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Carol Ann Shields was an American-born Canadian author. She is best known for her successful 1993 novel The Stone Diaries, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General's Award. Her novel Swann won the Best Novel Arthur Ellis Award in 1988.
More about Carol Shields...
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updated Sep 17, 2009 01:10pm