A realist with a gift for nuance

There’s something greedy about this posthumous reprinting of Carol Shields’ short fiction. Eighteen months after her death from cancer at 68, with her literary currency still valuable and a painful awareness that there will be no further fiction from this master of marital nuance, Shields’ publishers have reissued in one volume her three previous collections -- “Various Miracles” (1985), “The Orange Fish” (1989) and “Dressing Up for the Carnival” (2000). The sole addition is one previously unpublished story, “Segue,” her very last piece of writing.

The impulse to preserve, or at least extend, the legacy of Shields is understandable. With Canadian compatriots Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood, American-born Shields -- who moved to Canada as a newlywed at 22 -- was part of a rare trio that managed to break out of the ghetto of Canadian fiction and find recognition south of the border as well as across the Atlantic. But Shields is no Munro; it is her novels rather than her short fiction -- especially “The Stone Diaries” (1995) -- that most merit preservation. It’s a pity her publishers opted for completeness over quality; cutting fully half of the 56 stories in this book would have served her legacy better.

When “The Stories of John Cheever” was published in 1978, Cheever, who was still alive, weeded out “the most embarrassingly immature pieces.” The resulting volume contained 61 stories, all but four of which were culled from five earlier, out-of-print collections. It introduced a new generation to the marvels of Cheever’s prose and sold beyond any publisher’s wildest dream. This success no doubt led to a spate of “Collected Stories” from various publishers -- including Shields’ all-inclusive but uneven omnibus.

Many of Shields’ best stories feature long-married couples in their 60s who have settled into a comfortable if resigned state of under-stimulation, which they attempt to alleviate by traveling abroad. Shields probes these becalmed lives with a gentle, benign touch. In “Hinterland,” a couple returning to the Paris of their honeymoon recognize their mortality after a terrorist bomb scare at the Cluny Museum. In “Milk Bread Beer Ice,” another couple, driving from Toronto to Houston, fill the yawning silence by noticing the “submerged pattern of communication” in the order in which these four objects are listed on the hand-lettered road signs they pass at the convenience stores that flank each town.

In “Fragility,” a relocating couple smell divorce in the several properties they look at and wonder what buyers will sense of their recently deceased son’s presence in the house they are leaving behind. Shields’ less compelling stories often start with the sort of idea you might find listed in a writer’s notebook: dolls, manners, invitations, living without mirrors, wordlessness. We sense the author straining to flesh out her initial concept, free-associating with more perspiration than inspiration toward what adds up to a series of snapshots or meditations rather than a compelling narrative.

Chance is a major player in nearly all of Shields’ fiction, best used to underscore the willy-nilly randomness of life. Several stories feature writers, translators or other wordsmiths whose work is often propelled by serendipity. “A Scarf,” which readers may recognize from Shields’ last novel, “Unless,” in which it appeared virtually verbatim, is a nuanced tale about, among other things, the subtle competition between friends and fledgling writers.

The narrator of Shields’ last story, “Segue,” is a quintessential Shields protagonist. Jane Sexton is a self-described “aging woman of despairingly good cheer” who, for the last 30 years, has produced a sonnet every 14 days, on a rigid schedule. She culls her ideas from a spiral notebook of potential subjects recorded “randomly in ink or else pencil, and even in one case lip-liner.”

This nonsuicidal Sexton’s sonnets celebrate life in its myriad forms, from the smell of taxis to “the commingling of hollyhock and overhead wire.” “For the next two weeks my writing will approach the subject of my aging body,” she announces, confessing that she often feels “like a walking ossuary.” Married for more than 40 years to a well-known Chicago novelist, she comments that his books “come as a communal roar,” while her sonnets are quieter, in keeping with the meaning of sonnet, “little sound.” She painstakingly details her method of composition as well as the couple’s daily routine. Her marriage, like her sonnets, has become quiet. “We can no longer make each other laugh. We can’t even startle one another,” she writes.

The dictionary defines segue as “the act of making a smooth transition from one state or situation to another.” Like so many of Shields’ stories, “Segue” is about accepting the transition to old age and to a stage in mature marriages when spouses “speak in order to keep the silence away.” It’s a sober realism, neither despairing nor chipper. But Shields provides an arresting, thought-provoking coda with her last line, especially when considered in light of her terminal cancer: “If it weren’t for my particular circumstances I would be happy.” *