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Dressing Up for the Carnival
A bestselling collection of short stories from the author of The Stone Diaries (winner of the Pulitzer prize) and Larry’s Party (winner of the Orange prize)
All over town people are putting on their costumes; X slips into his wife’s lace-trimmed night gown and waltzes around his bedroom; Tamara is no longer the dull clerk receptionist when she wears that yellow skirt, she evolves into a stunning creature exuding passion and vitality. In ‘Weather’ a couple’s life is thrown into utter chaos when The National Association of Metereorologists go on strike – what will they wear? What will they eat? In ‘Soup du Jour’ a young boy contemplates life, the cracks in the pavement and his mother’s soup-making.
Each story encapsulates the human spirit, its diversities, complexities and absurdities. Shields observes with compassion the carnival that goes on in each of our lives and the realities that we create for ourselves. Carol Shields’ second collection of short stories celebrates the extraordinary details that are found in ordinary, everyday lives.
All over town people are putting on their costumes; X slips into his wife’s lace-trimmed night gown and waltzes around his bedroom; Tamara is no longer the dull clerk receptionist when she wears that yellow skirt, she evolves into a stunning creature exuding passion and vitality. In ‘Weather’ a couple’s life is thrown into utter chaos when The National Association of Metereorologists go on strike – what will they wear? What will they eat? In ‘Soup du Jour’ a young boy contemplates life, the cracks in the pavement and his mother’s soup-making.
Each story encapsulates the human spirit, its diversities, complexities and absurdities. Shields observes with compassion the carnival that goes on in each of our lives and the realities that we create for ourselves. Carol Shields’ second collection of short stories celebrates the extraordinary details that are found in ordinary, everyday lives.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
35 people are currently reading
484 people want to read
About the author
Carol Shields
73 books667 followersCarol 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews
April 12, 2024
(3.5) My reread of the short stories is now complete. Dressing Up for the Carnival was a late collection, published in 2000 – just a few years before the author’s death. Like Various Miracles, it’s a long book; in fact, at 22 stories, it’s the longest of the three. And, just like the other two, it opens with the title story, which is itself akin to “Various Miracles” with its pile-up of seemingly random happenings. All the examples are of how the things that people wear, or carry, create a persona. I noted pleasing symmetry in that “Dressing Up for the Carnival” opens the book, while the final story is “Dressing Down,” about a married couple divided by the husband’s devotion to naturism for one month out of each year.
I hadn’t realized that Unless, Shields’s final, Booker-shortlisted novel, arose from one of these stories: “A Scarf.” It took me just two paragraphs to figure it out, based on her narrator’s punning novel title (My Thyme Is Up). I’d also forgotten about the fun Shields pokes at literary snobbishness through her protagonist winning the Offenden Prize, which “recognizes literary quality and honors accessibility”. (There is actually a UK prize that rewards ease of reading, the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award.)
Many main characters throughout Shields’s work are artists, musicians, writers or poets. When windows are subject to an exorbitant tax, two painters decide to create their own, a joint project that brings the couple closer (in “Windows”). The elevated diction and proliferating French phrases skewer the narrator’s pretensions. Edging towards surrealism is another custom of Shields’s, seen here in “Weather,” where meteorological phenomena – or the lack thereof – are literal and a metaphor for marriage. This one finds an echo in “Stop!”, a fable about a queen who avoids all risk and change and thus disallows weather.
A number of the flash-length stories are similarly allegorical, or linguistic experiments, e.g., “Absence,” which is lipogrammatic (no “I”). “Flatties: their Various Forms and Uses” is a faux-anthropological one about flatbreads that reminded me of “Today Is the Day.” “The Harp” looks at the aftermath of the freak accident of a harp falling from the sky. “Keys” is a daisy-chain type of story (like “Home” et al.), with the keys symbolic of access, ownership, secrets, home, and more. Academia is another frequent subject for Shields. “Ilk” has the same academic jargon (“narrativity is ovarian, not ejaculatory”) and mockery of a predominantly male preserve as in “The Metaphor Is Dead–Pass It On” and “Salt.”
A topic shared with The Orange Fish is the biographer’s art. I loved “Edith-Esther,” about a biographer who becomes so obsessed with the expression of spirituality in his subject’s works that he completely skews her life story towards it, even though she tells him flat out she doesn’t believe in God. What a nightmare for an author to be so misunderstood; it’s no accident, of course, that it’s a male critic doing it to a female writer. “Invention” imagines creation scenarios for everything from steering wheel covers to daydreaming.
In “Dying for Love,” an early standout for me, three wronged women consider suicide. The vocabulary quickly alerts the reader to a change of time period after each section break. All three decide “Life is a thing to be cherished”. My three favourites, though, were the final three – all slightly cheeky with the focus on sex (and naturism). They were together an excellent way to close the volume, and the Collected Stories. In “The Next Best Kiss,” single mother Sandy meets a new paramour at a conference. She and Todd share garrulousness, and a sexual connection. But he doesn’t’ see the appeal of her biography’s subject, a Gregor Mendel-meets-John Clare type, and she is aghast to learn that he still lives with his mother.
“Eros,” set at a sexually charged dinner party (and you know from Larry’s Party that Shields is brilliant at party scenes), spools back through Ann’s erotic life, all the way to childhood ignorance and curiosity. “Everyone knew this awful secret which was everywhere suggested but which for Ann lay, still, a quarter-inch out of reach.” That Ann has lost a breast to cancer treatment made me ponder whether this story reflected Shields’s own experience – she died in 2003 of a recurrence of breast cancer.
There were a few too many second-tier stories here compared to The Orange Fish, but several gems; and I always appreciate Shields’s wordplay and insider’s satire on being an academic and/or a writer.
Bonus: Shields’s final short story, “Segue,” is printed first in the Collected Stories, but I saved it for last to try to preserve a sense of chronological order. Max Sexton writes novels, the latest of which sounds exactly like The Corrections – a 2001 publication, and Shields also references 9/11. Jane Sexton, the narrator, writes sonnets (“little sounds”) and thinks about ageing, routine, and the transmutation of life into art. A sonnet typically involves a “turn,” which I suppose is the origin of the title. Coming to the end of her life, did Shields think of herself primarily as a poet? This line did strike me as autobiographical: “Forget you are a sixty-seven-year-old woman with a girlish white pageboy.” The Oak Park, Illinois setting inevitably reminded me of Hemingway, but Shields, too, was from Chicago. The final line captures the bittersweet nature of so much of her work: “if it weren’t for my particular circumstances I would be happy.”
Rereading Shields is a habit I plan to keep up. For my next reread, I fancy Mary Swann.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
I hadn’t realized that Unless, Shields’s final, Booker-shortlisted novel, arose from one of these stories: “A Scarf.” It took me just two paragraphs to figure it out, based on her narrator’s punning novel title (My Thyme Is Up). I’d also forgotten about the fun Shields pokes at literary snobbishness through her protagonist winning the Offenden Prize, which “recognizes literary quality and honors accessibility”. (There is actually a UK prize that rewards ease of reading, the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award.)
Many main characters throughout Shields’s work are artists, musicians, writers or poets. When windows are subject to an exorbitant tax, two painters decide to create their own, a joint project that brings the couple closer (in “Windows”). The elevated diction and proliferating French phrases skewer the narrator’s pretensions. Edging towards surrealism is another custom of Shields’s, seen here in “Weather,” where meteorological phenomena – or the lack thereof – are literal and a metaphor for marriage. This one finds an echo in “Stop!”, a fable about a queen who avoids all risk and change and thus disallows weather.
A number of the flash-length stories are similarly allegorical, or linguistic experiments, e.g., “Absence,” which is lipogrammatic (no “I”). “Flatties: their Various Forms and Uses” is a faux-anthropological one about flatbreads that reminded me of “Today Is the Day.” “The Harp” looks at the aftermath of the freak accident of a harp falling from the sky. “Keys” is a daisy-chain type of story (like “Home” et al.), with the keys symbolic of access, ownership, secrets, home, and more. Academia is another frequent subject for Shields. “Ilk” has the same academic jargon (“narrativity is ovarian, not ejaculatory”) and mockery of a predominantly male preserve as in “The Metaphor Is Dead–Pass It On” and “Salt.”
A topic shared with The Orange Fish is the biographer’s art. I loved “Edith-Esther,” about a biographer who becomes so obsessed with the expression of spirituality in his subject’s works that he completely skews her life story towards it, even though she tells him flat out she doesn’t believe in God. What a nightmare for an author to be so misunderstood; it’s no accident, of course, that it’s a male critic doing it to a female writer. “Invention” imagines creation scenarios for everything from steering wheel covers to daydreaming.
In “Dying for Love,” an early standout for me, three wronged women consider suicide. The vocabulary quickly alerts the reader to a change of time period after each section break. All three decide “Life is a thing to be cherished”. My three favourites, though, were the final three – all slightly cheeky with the focus on sex (and naturism). They were together an excellent way to close the volume, and the Collected Stories. In “The Next Best Kiss,” single mother Sandy meets a new paramour at a conference. She and Todd share garrulousness, and a sexual connection. But he doesn’t’ see the appeal of her biography’s subject, a Gregor Mendel-meets-John Clare type, and she is aghast to learn that he still lives with his mother.
“Eros,” set at a sexually charged dinner party (and you know from Larry’s Party that Shields is brilliant at party scenes), spools back through Ann’s erotic life, all the way to childhood ignorance and curiosity. “Everyone knew this awful secret which was everywhere suggested but which for Ann lay, still, a quarter-inch out of reach.” That Ann has lost a breast to cancer treatment made me ponder whether this story reflected Shields’s own experience – she died in 2003 of a recurrence of breast cancer.
There were a few too many second-tier stories here compared to The Orange Fish, but several gems; and I always appreciate Shields’s wordplay and insider’s satire on being an academic and/or a writer.
Bonus: Shields’s final short story, “Segue,” is printed first in the Collected Stories, but I saved it for last to try to preserve a sense of chronological order. Max Sexton writes novels, the latest of which sounds exactly like The Corrections – a 2001 publication, and Shields also references 9/11. Jane Sexton, the narrator, writes sonnets (“little sounds”) and thinks about ageing, routine, and the transmutation of life into art. A sonnet typically involves a “turn,” which I suppose is the origin of the title. Coming to the end of her life, did Shields think of herself primarily as a poet? This line did strike me as autobiographical: “Forget you are a sixty-seven-year-old woman with a girlish white pageboy.” The Oak Park, Illinois setting inevitably reminded me of Hemingway, but Shields, too, was from Chicago. The final line captures the bittersweet nature of so much of her work: “if it weren’t for my particular circumstances I would be happy.”
Rereading Shields is a habit I plan to keep up. For my next reread, I fancy Mary Swann.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
June 26, 2018
I recently read and positively loved another short story collection by the author. This one was probably objectively just as good, but subjectively I might not have been as much in the mood for it and it is definitely the sort of read you have to be in the mood for. There’s actually a perfect analogy for the author’s writing in one of the stories here, it’s about an author on the book tour and she discusses writing fiction with her friend. They talk of one person who prefers the simplicity of beginning, middle and end structure, but the friend is more about putty of life. Random, ephemeral things to spin a thinly delicate gauzy narrative around. Tangential threads, situations observed, imagined and reimagined. Some of the stories have a more traditional structure, but so many of them are this life putty, small things, minute details, fleeting moods. It reminds me very much of dozing off while reading and having the mind spin out a tiny yet meticulously detailed dream based on the last sentence read. Yes, instead of a proper nap. So yes, you gotta be in the mood for it, but it is so lovely, so very lovely. The author is a terrific wordsmith, she crafts sentences with such skill and care, they come out these perfect things of beauty to be read and enjoyed. And these story collections are short, so you don’t have to spent too much time in the dreamlike state of suspended fictional animation. I’d be most interested to see how these talents work when applied to long form fiction.
January 18, 2013
Great book to read when traveling. A story a night, a good, story every night that is, and an outstanding final story. That one blew me away. It is hard for me to imagine that any husband would ask this of his wife....but my gut tells me that it could have happened.
I recognized 2 of the stories as chapters in her last book. I recommend that you get this book, than go out and find all of her other books. You won't be sorry.
I recognized 2 of the stories as chapters in her last book. I recommend that you get this book, than go out and find all of her other books. You won't be sorry.
December 30, 2021
Favorite stories: "Windows", "Mirrors"
January 6, 2016
I picked this book up at a small book sale while on vacation in the mountains, largely on the basis of it being one of the few works of fiction on sale that wasn't by Clive Cussler, Tom Clancey, or Danielle Steele. I had never heard of Carol Shields and had essentially no expectations. What I ended up with was a pretty good, if uneven, collection of stories.
Shields' stories take a deep dive into the emotional complexity of people's relationships, especially marriages, and examine the compromises and concessions that people make in life and love. But she also veers into some stranger, more experimental territory, with some stories that verge on magical realism, a story set in a sort of dystopian future where people are taxed on the basis of how many windows they have, and a story written without the letter "I" in it.
Some of the experiments don't pay off, and some of the stories feel like drafts that meander around the idea of an idea before stumbling to an unfulfilling close. But most of the stories are good to quite good, with some pretty affecting moments throughout, and the book finishes strong with a handful of its better stories stacked up at the end. At 210 pages, Dressing Up for the Carnival doesn't take very long to get through, and while I wouldn't rush this book to the top of your "to-read" list, if you can find it for a buck or so, like I did, it's certainly worth checking out.
Shields' stories take a deep dive into the emotional complexity of people's relationships, especially marriages, and examine the compromises and concessions that people make in life and love. But she also veers into some stranger, more experimental territory, with some stories that verge on magical realism, a story set in a sort of dystopian future where people are taxed on the basis of how many windows they have, and a story written without the letter "I" in it.
Some of the experiments don't pay off, and some of the stories feel like drafts that meander around the idea of an idea before stumbling to an unfulfilling close. But most of the stories are good to quite good, with some pretty affecting moments throughout, and the book finishes strong with a handful of its better stories stacked up at the end. At 210 pages, Dressing Up for the Carnival doesn't take very long to get through, and while I wouldn't rush this book to the top of your "to-read" list, if you can find it for a buck or so, like I did, it's certainly worth checking out.
December 26, 2009
I found this collection of short stories pretty uneven. The good ones were very good but the others I just skimmed. I can recall 3 stories that were beautifully written and packed with resonance, however I was so glad when I made it through this slow moving collection and could return this back to the library.
May 14, 2015
I really enjoyed most of the stories in this collection. I liked how off kilter everything was. My favourite was the story about Keys.
October 11, 2011
Only a third of the way through, but in this little book of short stories, so far every one is a gem. Nothing much happens: people dress up for a carnival, a mother buys a scarf for her daughter, the meteorologists go on strike and weather stops changing, various women fail to die for love - each story is beautifully observed, atmospheric and often very funny. Can't wait to read some more.
OK, I'm back, and finished reading it. The rest of the stories were equally fascinating - a recommended read.
OK, I'm back, and finished reading it. The rest of the stories were equally fascinating - a recommended read.
June 8, 2012
A fine collection of stories from the mistress of emotional nuance. There are some clever little pieces in here (one story written entirely without the use of the letter 'i' for example). But Shields's real skill is her ability to articulate the ordinary as extraordinary while simultaneously freighting the numinous moments we all recognise with even more magic.
January 27, 2023
A brilliant collection of short stories. Each story is an ordinary yet unique and profound tale, capturing themes of relationships, family, and the human theorizing mind. Carol Shields writes with a spectrum from fictional -dystopian to academic and inquisitive. Favorite story: Absence- a sure example of the skills of Carol Shields.
March 1, 2013
Favorite story is Windows. Picture the day when the government imposes a windows tax. Citizens are free to choose their own level of taxation, shutting off as much light as you wish as a civic protest.
Enjoyed A Scarf too.
Enjoyed A Scarf too.
May 21, 2016
This is not a good book. Some of the stories are good, but they don't make up for all the terrible ones in between. I only finished it so I could let everyone else know not to bother and so it could at least count toward my reading goal for the year.
February 5, 2014
just finished reading Pulitzer Prize Winner Carol Shield’s collection of short stories. I have enjoyed her work in the past, her novels, especially “Larry’s Party.”
One thing I will say about “Dressing up for the Carnival” is that I was continually surprised. Shields is a writer who changes from my viewpoint to the next with ease, someone who can seemingly be behind anyone’s eyes and you would except her to be there. The stories range from a meek writer who wants to find the perfect scarf for her daughter to a grandfather who started a nudist camp. The objects in her story are brought to life and we can see how objects can hold such deep meaning.
My favourite story was ” Invention” a sweet and amusing tale of all the people in a family who had invented things. As a grammar nerd I was so intrigued to see the stories behind the semi colon and the hyphen, so amusing the think of people actually inventing these things, before realizing that, why yes, someone had to invent them after all.
I like the reality of the stories. They almost felt gritty.
All in all it was an easy read, a great collection and continually changing. However, as I usually find with most shorts, the stories and characters just did not stay with me.
3.5/5 stars.
One thing I will say about “Dressing up for the Carnival” is that I was continually surprised. Shields is a writer who changes from my viewpoint to the next with ease, someone who can seemingly be behind anyone’s eyes and you would except her to be there. The stories range from a meek writer who wants to find the perfect scarf for her daughter to a grandfather who started a nudist camp. The objects in her story are brought to life and we can see how objects can hold such deep meaning.
My favourite story was ” Invention” a sweet and amusing tale of all the people in a family who had invented things. As a grammar nerd I was so intrigued to see the stories behind the semi colon and the hyphen, so amusing the think of people actually inventing these things, before realizing that, why yes, someone had to invent them after all.
I like the reality of the stories. They almost felt gritty.
All in all it was an easy read, a great collection and continually changing. However, as I usually find with most shorts, the stories and characters just did not stay with me.
3.5/5 stars.
March 2, 2015
I appreciate Ms. Shields' writing style, and her choice of complex words (some stories I had to read with my grammar book and dictionary handy). For the most part, the stories invoked feelings of nostalgia for the expanse of my imagination during my adolescence. She painted pictures of emotions and situations that I remember imagining and experiencing. I only found two of the stories tedious. I'm keeping this book, hoping to grow into some of the stories as I reach the characters' various ages.
October 20, 2018
Carol Shields is such a great writer - so many of these stories could have been spun out into a really good novel - not so much the speculative ones, I’d leave that to Attwood.. She has a way of getting across the ordinary extraordinaryness of everyday life and everyday people in such an accessible and insightful way, her writing is a pleasure to read. But ultimately these stories were more like a set of gourmet hors d’oeuvres than the big juicy main course I was after.
April 4, 2021
What an exhausting read. Why does she have to be obscure and deliberately perverse, always speaking in code and never explaining her vague and contradictory and heavy sentences. In amongst that are good characters, wry observations, interesting stories. Still I am glad I’ve finished and have no desire to read any more of her books.
August 10, 2009
B- One of her earlier collection of stories, many of these are experimental. Some of them work, some don't.
July 16, 2024
First the mid: A lot of the shorter stories didn’t do it for me, a bit too formless and lacking. These felt a bit like stuffing, maybe some ideas she whacked out as a warm up before her actual writing begins. Unfortunately, they drag the collection down and kind of taint the pacing and overall flow of the book as a whole, but I’m choosing to focus on the strong stories in this collection.
I read Stone Diaries last year and absolutely loved it. Shields has a way of dissecting her characters and imbuing them with stark humanity, no matter how silly or temporary she also makes them feel. Her work cuts to the core of being alive, everything that feels a bit useless and also very important. When I saw this collection at my local thrift store I had to pick it up, I wanted to know what Shields was like in short form.
The problem with short story collections is that it’s almost always hit or miss. For example, salt slow, the short story collection by Julia Armfield author of Our Wives Under the Sea (a book beloved by me) was so hit or miss that the whole thing just felt a bit tepid and repetitive, many felt like first drafts for her more successful novel than fleshed our short form stories, which left me feeling a bit bummed.
Similarly, scattered showers by rainbow Rowell, which I consider to be a more consistent and developed collection, still had a few stories that didn’t hit the mark. I think comparison is a bit hard to avoid when you read short story collections so instead of focusing on what didn’t work I want to focus on what did.
I went through and marked the stories I felt added to the collection, the stories I enjoyed and out of 22 stories I marked 12, which may seem like a bad amount, but the other stories were often much shorter, many were one to two pages at the most.
These shorter stories as I said, while a bit unsatisfying and half-baked, (a few even venturing into almost sci-fi territory which felt very out of left field) went quickly enough. I will say there was a significant lull right in the middle of the collection from pages 76-93 that was almost enough for me to put the book down, but I’m glad I pushed through!
Here I’ll name some of my favorites of the collection, stories I felt Shields felt the most on her game and in her element: mirrors, soup de jour, edith-ester, the next best kiss. I do think the best stories of the collection are at the tail end, there was a good run of strong characters and stories that all meshed well and left me feeling kinda warm and squishy, despite some of the more melancholy bits. The thing about shields is she sometimes gets a bit dark, but it still feels buoyed by a sense of carrying on, our characters never really fall apart, they trudge on through.
What works about Shields writing is her unflinching gaze on the mundane and its insanity. The characters in these stories act mainly casually and composed but are often in very unusual situations, and it’s a very magical realism adjacent world that Shields crafts, a world where a harp can fall on you and your grandfather is a nudist, things that can technically happen but maybe just once in a lifetime.
There’s a futileness to the characters in Shield’s stories, they are as trapped in their boring, often changing lives as we are, and that feeling of time passing, desires being ignored, the past and the future happening at once and folding in on themselves, feels at once tender and terrifying. I call it: the magical mundane
She sometimes ends stories triumphant but more often than not she ends them on a whimper, a somewhat down note. Our lonely single mom doesn’t get the guy, the workaholic writer picks up another project, grandma wants a naked open casket. These endings aren’t necessarily happy, but they feel kind of inevitable. One of my favorite endings was in Edith-ester, were without fanfare or event, she passes into death with a collection of lost items in hand, ignoring the somewhat idealistic biography and choosing to move into something else, forward somewhere.
Overall, I love the characters that Shields puts in her magical mundane, they feel familiar to me, I feel a sort of peaceful emptiness when I read, I get filled and then I’m poured out again, and I have a sense she knows things about life, about living, that I am just beginning to understand.
I read Stone Diaries last year and absolutely loved it. Shields has a way of dissecting her characters and imbuing them with stark humanity, no matter how silly or temporary she also makes them feel. Her work cuts to the core of being alive, everything that feels a bit useless and also very important. When I saw this collection at my local thrift store I had to pick it up, I wanted to know what Shields was like in short form.
The problem with short story collections is that it’s almost always hit or miss. For example, salt slow, the short story collection by Julia Armfield author of Our Wives Under the Sea (a book beloved by me) was so hit or miss that the whole thing just felt a bit tepid and repetitive, many felt like first drafts for her more successful novel than fleshed our short form stories, which left me feeling a bit bummed.
Similarly, scattered showers by rainbow Rowell, which I consider to be a more consistent and developed collection, still had a few stories that didn’t hit the mark. I think comparison is a bit hard to avoid when you read short story collections so instead of focusing on what didn’t work I want to focus on what did.
I went through and marked the stories I felt added to the collection, the stories I enjoyed and out of 22 stories I marked 12, which may seem like a bad amount, but the other stories were often much shorter, many were one to two pages at the most.
These shorter stories as I said, while a bit unsatisfying and half-baked, (a few even venturing into almost sci-fi territory which felt very out of left field) went quickly enough. I will say there was a significant lull right in the middle of the collection from pages 76-93 that was almost enough for me to put the book down, but I’m glad I pushed through!
Here I’ll name some of my favorites of the collection, stories I felt Shields felt the most on her game and in her element: mirrors, soup de jour, edith-ester, the next best kiss. I do think the best stories of the collection are at the tail end, there was a good run of strong characters and stories that all meshed well and left me feeling kinda warm and squishy, despite some of the more melancholy bits. The thing about shields is she sometimes gets a bit dark, but it still feels buoyed by a sense of carrying on, our characters never really fall apart, they trudge on through.
What works about Shields writing is her unflinching gaze on the mundane and its insanity. The characters in these stories act mainly casually and composed but are often in very unusual situations, and it’s a very magical realism adjacent world that Shields crafts, a world where a harp can fall on you and your grandfather is a nudist, things that can technically happen but maybe just once in a lifetime.
There’s a futileness to the characters in Shield’s stories, they are as trapped in their boring, often changing lives as we are, and that feeling of time passing, desires being ignored, the past and the future happening at once and folding in on themselves, feels at once tender and terrifying. I call it: the magical mundane
She sometimes ends stories triumphant but more often than not she ends them on a whimper, a somewhat down note. Our lonely single mom doesn’t get the guy, the workaholic writer picks up another project, grandma wants a naked open casket. These endings aren’t necessarily happy, but they feel kind of inevitable. One of my favorite endings was in Edith-ester, were without fanfare or event, she passes into death with a collection of lost items in hand, ignoring the somewhat idealistic biography and choosing to move into something else, forward somewhere.
Overall, I love the characters that Shields puts in her magical mundane, they feel familiar to me, I feel a sort of peaceful emptiness when I read, I get filled and then I’m poured out again, and I have a sense she knows things about life, about living, that I am just beginning to understand.
April 4, 2020
This book had been sitting on my bookshelf for years I had obviously bought it perhaps after reading one of Carol Shields novels such as The Stone Diaries but never quite got round to reading it/fancied reading it. Now having forced my way through it I understand why it had never been selected before. To be fair I think short stories are difficult to achieve the same sense of satisfaction in a reader that a novel can but this selection was particularly unsatisfactory to me. I did like a few of them - a scarf, Mirrors and the Next Best Kiss gave me what I wanted in a short story, a moment that illuminates a life lived. However some of the others seemed to me just a way of making a clever point for people who understand the intricacies of a narrow topic. I always know when I'm not really enjoying a book when I keep looking at what page I am on and thus how far it is to the end, which unfortunately was often the case with this book. I do feel a bit churlish giving only 1 star to this book as it was well written but I didn't really feel engaged with it.
November 17, 2021
*Spoiler alert, this might change or ruin your experience with the book if you haven't read it yet!*
What were these stories about? I like wondering what the author meant by them. Help me out with your take on them:
1. The title story is about how we experiment with different versions of ourselves, and focus on appearances, whether these appearances reflect reality or not. I don't think the author passes any judgement on us for this. She does say at the end, these costumes are either embellishments of the truth, or in cases where we might be too shy to show our true selves to others, the costumes we experiment with might be even more true than what we normally show in our usual environment. I didn't get this story until I researched and thought hard about the last part.
2. A Scarf - Author Reta Winters lacks confidence in herself and her work. Her friend Gwen on the other hand is even worse off, can't congratulate Reta on her achievement, instead diminishing it. Does Gwen decide to let Reta keep the scarf because she is too timid to object? Or because she realizes Gwen needs it even more than she does? Ugh, I've definitely been taken off guard by misunderstandings and too frozen to know what to do!
3. Weather - loved it, and I think the author is saying we should be thankful of the shit life throws at us, because without it, we wouldn't recognize the lack of shit when we have it. Definitely a view that can help one through a bad day. Is there something here about a marriage? Not too sure why she took the time to show the personalities in the relationship... but this added a dimension.
7. Stop! - The author is begging us to stop being scared of every last danger, and live a little. Although usually with this theme, mathematical life is scorned over artistic life. In this story, both art and math are feared...I guess the paranoia got so bad, that even something as natural as the rising sun is scorned by those in control. It's likely a statement about those situations where men are allowed to be put in positions where they tell women what's good for them.
8. Mirrors - I like this story. Heart.
9. The Harp - I was pretty lost with this weird scene until I scrounged around online. Is this saying that people can get treated so badly, but blame themselves or allow others to blame them. I can imagine feeling like a lead weight fell out of the sky and cut my leg off through no fault of my own, and meanwhile still wonder if I did something wrong. It's definitely happened.
12. Absence - Like. I was surprised by the little secret in this story. : )
I do not understand the significance of keys, or why some people liked that story. Who cares about keys? I don't think people are attached to keys. I also didn't care for the title story. But I loved Weather, and Mirrors, both of which had single characters to focus on.
The one about the historical Roman arena found in someone's backyard...I am from Saskatchewan, and I can confirm some people complain about inconveniences caused by protection of archeological sites remaining from First Nations. This story has got to be about that, shaming the people who would minimize the history of someone else. "it's got nothing to do with us!", the lady complained.
What were these stories about? I like wondering what the author meant by them. Help me out with your take on them:
1. The title story is about how we experiment with different versions of ourselves, and focus on appearances, whether these appearances reflect reality or not. I don't think the author passes any judgement on us for this. She does say at the end, these costumes are either embellishments of the truth, or in cases where we might be too shy to show our true selves to others, the costumes we experiment with might be even more true than what we normally show in our usual environment. I didn't get this story until I researched and thought hard about the last part.
2. A Scarf - Author Reta Winters lacks confidence in herself and her work. Her friend Gwen on the other hand is even worse off, can't congratulate Reta on her achievement, instead diminishing it. Does Gwen decide to let Reta keep the scarf because she is too timid to object? Or because she realizes Gwen needs it even more than she does? Ugh, I've definitely been taken off guard by misunderstandings and too frozen to know what to do!
3. Weather - loved it, and I think the author is saying we should be thankful of the shit life throws at us, because without it, we wouldn't recognize the lack of shit when we have it. Definitely a view that can help one through a bad day. Is there something here about a marriage? Not too sure why she took the time to show the personalities in the relationship... but this added a dimension.
7. Stop! - The author is begging us to stop being scared of every last danger, and live a little. Although usually with this theme, mathematical life is scorned over artistic life. In this story, both art and math are feared...I guess the paranoia got so bad, that even something as natural as the rising sun is scorned by those in control. It's likely a statement about those situations where men are allowed to be put in positions where they tell women what's good for them.
8. Mirrors - I like this story. Heart.
9. The Harp - I was pretty lost with this weird scene until I scrounged around online. Is this saying that people can get treated so badly, but blame themselves or allow others to blame them. I can imagine feeling like a lead weight fell out of the sky and cut my leg off through no fault of my own, and meanwhile still wonder if I did something wrong. It's definitely happened.
12. Absence - Like. I was surprised by the little secret in this story. : )
I do not understand the significance of keys, or why some people liked that story. Who cares about keys? I don't think people are attached to keys. I also didn't care for the title story. But I loved Weather, and Mirrors, both of which had single characters to focus on.
The one about the historical Roman arena found in someone's backyard...I am from Saskatchewan, and I can confirm some people complain about inconveniences caused by protection of archeological sites remaining from First Nations. This story has got to be about that, shaming the people who would minimize the history of someone else. "it's got nothing to do with us!", the lady complained.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 14, 2018
The way Carol Shields used words to make ordinary people and situations extraordinary reminds me of the way a talented photographer can turn a mundane object into the winning entry in a photo contest. Her books are a treasure in limited supply that I savor one by one. I am more familiar with her novels. Dressing Up for the Carnival is a collection short stories that do not appear to have a central theme. A few were so experimental in nature I wondered if I was reading the same author. Others were classic Carol Shields, and a couple were reminiscent of another short story writer whose work I know and love, Laurie Colwin. It's tragic to have lost these fine minds early!
April 21, 2019
Book 26
Dressing Up for the Carnival
Carol Shields
2000
4/5
There's twenty two stories here. The first five are beautiful free-flowing perfection. It's possible I've not read their ilk before, so new they feel. Carol Shields, I know how good she is. How seamlessly she can penetrate the heart and the mind to reach specific thoughts and feelings, little everyday things, that reveal the deepest in our humanity. So I'm not sure why the rest of the stories are so indifferent. It could be me the reader or it could be her having too much fun with the loosened structure. I don't know and it bothers me that I don't. But those five stories are really something.
Dressing Up for the Carnival
Carol Shields
2000
4/5
There's twenty two stories here. The first five are beautiful free-flowing perfection. It's possible I've not read their ilk before, so new they feel. Carol Shields, I know how good she is. How seamlessly she can penetrate the heart and the mind to reach specific thoughts and feelings, little everyday things, that reveal the deepest in our humanity. So I'm not sure why the rest of the stories are so indifferent. It could be me the reader or it could be her having too much fun with the loosened structure. I don't know and it bothers me that I don't. But those five stories are really something.
September 7, 2021
This was a beautiful collection of short stories by one of my favourite authors. The presentation of abstract conecpts mingled with quotidian details was thought-provoking and unusual, and sprinkled throughout with Shields' genius imagery. There were a couple of stories I didn't love due to the plots, which is the only reason it's not a 5 star, but the beauty of a book like this is that you can dip in and out, and hopefully find a few gems. Some of my favourites were 'Weather' and 'New Music'. Would definitely reccomend!
May 1, 2025
This book is a bit like Forrest Gump's box of chocklits. You never know what you're going to get. Each short story is like a candy in some ways. You can't indulge in a whole bunch at one go.
Individually, I found each story to be well-written, engaging, and thought provoking, and true to life, and much more. They are all quite separate from each other, there are no characters who appear more than once. I found this to be a refreshing diversion from an interminable history of Ireland that I am read at the same time.
Individually, I found each story to be well-written, engaging, and thought provoking, and true to life, and much more. They are all quite separate from each other, there are no characters who appear more than once. I found this to be a refreshing diversion from an interminable history of Ireland that I am read at the same time.
April 8, 2024
Introspective, wryly humourous, serious and whimsical all at the same time. Shields' work focuses on the interpersonal relationships, the banal interactions, the secret passions. Her characters have a deep relationship with wordsmithing and creative pursuits. The performers of the audiobook are appropriately polished and engaged. My favourite stories are "The Scarf" and the last one, bitterly witty, "Dressing Down".
May 16, 2024
All over town people are putting on their costumes. . . . We cannot live without our illusions.
Stories about a scarf, the weather, mirrors, dressing up, etc. I liked the way these ordinary objects and concepts were weaved into the stories and how contemplative they were. I’m just not a fan of the writing style in some.
My favorite stories:
Soup du Jour
A Scarf
The Next Best Kiss
August 16, 2024
I'm going to start this review the way I've started a few reviews of short story collections lately and say that it was kind of a mixed bag. Some of the stories were really good, some were just meh. I haven't read Carol Shields in years and I'd kind of forgot how good she can be. I was going to give this three stars initially, but I really liked the last few stories, so gave it the extra star. Some really good stuff here, and some stuff that's just there.
November 24, 2018
In this collection, each story centers on a particular object or significant piece of clothing, making us think of why we become so attached to things and the meaning we place on them. I especially liked the final story, 'Dressing Down', which is about the community spirit of naturism, and how an absence of 'things' can be just as meaningful as the presence of them.
April 3, 2019
Beautifully written. A wonderful collection of stories filled with delightful observations and carefully crafted language. I can tell that Shields had a lot of fun writing some of these stories, and has put a lot of time and thought into all of them. There is silliness and oddity mixed in with seriousness and reflection. Definitely worth reading.
June 30, 2020
I loved The Stone Diaries, Larry's Party, and Unless, but I didn't like much of this book of stories. Most of these were not short stories, but short fables: the couple who lived without mirrors, the time meteorologists went on strike and there was no weather, the queen who could tolerate nothing. Not up to her past writing.
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