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Thanks to @shawnmooney who posted a quote from Carol Shields' book Startle and Illuminate, I went in search of books by Shields and selected this one from 1976. Her writing is superb! #newtomewriters #carolshields

I loved Shields' later stuff, especially the stories, but this, her debut novel, was awful. I enjoyed the lively, whimsical prose - to the point of tearing up nostalgically in the first few pages - but this tale of a reticent biographer and her circle grappling with lofty matters of literary inspiration, plagiarism, and Canadian identity came across more like a nerdy episode of The Brady Bunch than a serious work of fiction, comical or otherwise.

I've only read her later novels and short stories. This sentence, in the opening pages of her first novel (1976), is so quintessentially Carol-Shieldsian that it made me all verklempt. ❤❤
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