Various Miracles: Stories - Softcover

Shields, Carol

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1480459836 ISBN 13: 9781480459830

Publisher: Open Road Media, 2013

Synopsis

The small miracles of our day-to-day lives are on captivating display in this unforgettable collection by Pulitzer Prize winner Carol Shields Various Miracles brings together twenty-one short stories, modern parables that illuminate the mysteries of everyday existence. In the title story, four strangers on a bus are all reading the same book. In "Fragility," Ivy's husband reflects on their marriage, the death of their young son, Christopher, and the plane ride that will deliver them to a new life. From "The Metaphor Is Dead - Pass It On" to "Home" to "Others"-in which a couple's act of generosity is repaid in annual Christmas cards with no return address-this collection is by turns witty, inventive, and moving. Whether portraying a violinist yearning to break free of overprotective parents or an elderly widow mowing her lawn to the thunderous timpani of memory, Carol Shields depicts the struggles of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. It's a world where magic coexists with reality, and where leaps of faith and acts of kindness create their own miracles.

About this title

Review:

‘Carol Shelds’s short stories are full of sentences you could almost sing... [her] sentences transmute base metal into gold.’
Independent

‘Shields’s stories are spiked by moments of supernatural transcendence.’
Victoria Glendinning

‘Shields’s outlines of lives, witty and generous, are alive with a fragile incandescence.’
Independent on Sunday

‘Carol Shields manages in a particularly original way to turn water into wine, transfiguring the mundane with meaning.’
The Times

From the Back Cover:

Slyly and perceptively, Carol Shields surveys the whole range of life’s surprises, the quirks of chance and coincidence, the setbacks and improviations. The stories collected here offer an entrancing look at some of the various miracles of everyday life: the housewife who transforms herself into a successful saleswoman; the special intimacy that binds a group of strangers at an evening class; the ideal husband who is really an arrogant bore and the prosaic woman who becomes a poem.

”Carol Shield’s short stories are full of sentences you could almost sing..[her] sentences transmute base metal into gold.”
INDEPENDENT

”Shields’s stories are spiked by moments of supernatural transcendence.”
'Victoria Glendinning'

”Shields’s outlines of lives, witty and generous, are alive with a fragile incandescence.”
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

”Carol Shields manages in a particularly original way to turn water into wine, transfiguring the mundane with meaning.”
THE TIMES

About this edition

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1480459836
• ISBN 13: 9781480459830
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 228