In 2020, Marcie of Buried in Print and I did a buddy read (reread in some cases for me) of six Carol Shields novels and found it very rewarding – my write-up is here. For the first quarter of this year, we’re rereading Shields’s short stories: one volume per month from the Collected Stories. I believe it was 2008–10 when I first binged on Shields’s work from Surrey Libraries – that was my modus operandi at the time, finding a reliable author and devouring everything I could find by them (Curtis Sittenfeld was another of my prized finds) – and I know I did get hold of her complete stories even though I was no great story reader, but I’ve retained no memory of them. Now that I’ve read so much more by Shields, sometimes twice, I’m better able to track her themes across the body of work.

Various Miracles was published in 1985, when Shields was 50. She was still a decade from finding success for her best-known works, The Stone Diaries and Larry’s Party, and so far had published poetry, criticism and several novels. The title story’s string of coincidences and the final story, sharing a title with one of her poetry volumes (“Others”), neatly express the book’s concerns with chance and how we relate to other people and imagine their lives. I was disoriented by first starting the UK paperback (Fourth Estate, 1994). I had no idea it’s a selection; a number of the stories appear in the Collected volume under her next title, The Orange Fish. Before I realized that, I’d read two interlopers, including “Hazel,” which also spotlights the theme of coincidence. “Everything is an accident, Hazel would be willing to say if asked. Her whole life is an accident, and by accident she has blundered into the heart of it,” stumbling into a sales career during her widowhood.

The third story, indeed, is explicitly called “Accidents,” and “Scenes” echoes the opening story by presenting Frances’ life as a process of arbitrary accretion. “There are people who think such scenes are ornaments suspended from lives that are otherwise busy and useful. Frances knows perfectly well that they are what a life is made of, one fitting against the next like English paving-stones.” I asked myself whether such a vision of life rang true for me, comparing with two comedians’ diaries I’m reading at the moment (A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris and Went to London, Took the Dog by Nina Stibbe) and with my mother’s journals, and pondering what’s more important: Random happenings and encounters? (That’s mostly where those authors locate humour.) Or what one does, thinks and feels? I prefer self-reflection on who one is becoming, but the recording of one’s life and times is also valuable. There’s a balance to be struck there somewhere; I’m still working on it in my own journal.

I noted a few other recurring elements in the stories: travel, especially to France (4 stories); male narrators or main characters (5 stories); and an obsession with language. The irony to “The Metaphor Is Dead—Pass It On” is that the professor’s diatribe is full of figurative language. The writer antihero of “Flitting Behaviour,” Meershank, is insufferable with his puns and lavish prose, but learns the worth of simple phrases as he and his loved ones compare their hearing of his wife’s last words. “Words” started out like a climate fable, but I decided it’s more of an allegorical satire about words as so much hot air. Such flash fictions, also including “Pardon” (a spate of apologies), “Invitations” (a feast-or-famine social calendar), and “Purple Blooms” (everyone’s reading the same Mexican poet), felt slight. In a book of 21 stories, some are always bound to pale.

By contrast, my favourites went deep with a few characters, or reflected on the writer’s craft. “Fragility” has a couple moving from Toronto to Vancouver, starting a new life and looking for a house that gives off good vibrations (not “a divorce house”). The slow reveal of the catalyzing incident with their son is devastating. With “Others,” Shields (or editors) saved the best for last. On honeymoon in France, Robert and Lila help a fellow English-speaking couple by cashing a check for them. Every year thereafter, Nigel and Jane send them a Christmas card, winging its way from England to Canada. Robert and Lila romanticize these people they met all of once. The plot turns on what is in those pithy 1–2-sentence annual updates versus what remains unspoken. “Love so Fleeting, Love so Fine,” too, involves filling in an entire backstory for an unknown character. Another favourite was “Poaching,” about friends touring England and picking up hitchhikers, whose stories they appropriate.

This doesn’t always feel like a cohesive collection; I think it could stand to lose a good 5–6 stories and perhaps group the others more effectively. But for the way her central subjects were starting to coalesce, and for a handful of very powerful stories, I’d rate it more highly than I originally did, and can recommend that Shields fans seek it out.

My original rating (c. 2008):

My rating now: