false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175186570m/489239.jpg 489239 9 In her third collection of short fiction, <I>Dressing Up for the Carnival</I>, Carol Shields employs two tales about clothing as structural bookends. The title story, which functions as her opening salvo, begins with a highly suggestive sentence: "All over town people are putting on their costumes." In some cases, of course, this is a literal description. Tamara, for example, dons a yellow cotton skirt without checking the weather, for "her clothes <I>are</I> the weather, as powerful in their sunniness as the strong, muzzy early morning light." But clearly Shields is also making a statement about identity--about the mix-and-match process of deciding who we are. Thus we get the more discreet high jinks of <blockquote> X, an anonymous middle-aged citizen who, sometimes, in the privacy of his own bedroom, in the embrace of happiness, waltzes about in his wife's lace-trimmed nightgown.... He lifts the blind an inch and sees the sun setting boldly behind his pear tree, its mingled coarseness and refinement giving an air of confusion. </blockquote> The final story, "Dressing Down," details the friction between a hardcore nudist and his reluctant wife, and suggests very nearly the opposite moral: we are defined by the garments we remove. Elsewhere, Shields explores the questions of identity and intimacy with less of a sartorial accent. "Invention" features another fractured marriage, this one done in by the wife's invention of a steering-wheel muff ("Money began to trickle in, then became rivers of money, especially when she introduced her famous faux-leopard muff, which became the signature for all that was chic, young, adventurous, and daring"). In "Eros," surely among the most elegant stories in this elegant collection, sex is both transcendent and suffocating, an entrance into the self and every human being's cross to bear. <I>Dressing Up for the Carnival</I> is a witty performance in which Shields occasionally thumbs her nose at the very notion of the traditional short story (much as she tinkered with novelistic protocol in <I>The Stone Diaries</I>). But make no mistake: she's a serious artist, with her eye fixed firmly on the naked (or at least half-undressed) truth. <I>--Bob Brandeis</I> 484479 2000 Dressing Up for the Carnival total:100|5:8|4:42|3:37|2:10|1:3| 100 342 161 10 4 0 false false Mon Oct 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 19 11:04:40 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 28 14:25:24 -0700 2009 twice more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Nov 24 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Jan 05 09:48:51 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 05 09:55:57 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Oct 20 12:08:56 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 20 12:10:47 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Wed May 06 20:10:06 -0700 2009 Wed May 06 20:11:36 -0700 2009 2 0 false false Sun Aug 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 09 18:12:03 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 09 18:12:20 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Fri Jul 03 14:46:56 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 03 14:49:04 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Thu Mar 29 09:47:09 -0700 2007 Thu Mar 29 12:59:23 -0700 2007 3 0 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Aug 12 14:23:15 -0700 2007 Thu Aug 30 02:59:34 -0700 2007 3 0 false false Mon Jul 21 08:32:44 -0700 2008 Mon Jul 21 08:46:17 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Thu Jan 10 23:58:30 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 10 23:58:58 -0800 2008 3 0 false false Sun Nov 22 17:17:14 -0800 2009 Sun Nov 22 17:17:14 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Mon Nov 16 18:51:39 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 16 18:51:39 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Sat Nov 07 22:13:30 -0800 2009 Sat Nov 07 22:13:30 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Mon Nov 02 12:07:33 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 02 12:07:33 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Sat Oct 31 13:43:25 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 31 13:43:25 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Oct 30 15:29:00 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 30 15:29:03 -0700 2009 2 0 false false Thu Oct 22 22:36:10 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 22 22:36:10 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Oct 21 10:26:08 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 21 10:26:08 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Sun Oct 18 17:27:51 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 18 17:27:51 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Thu Oct 15 23:07:10 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 15 23:07:10 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=489239