The Orange Fish: Stories

Winner of the Marian Engel Award: Passion, longing, regret, and transformation infuse these twelve tales by one of our most “shrewd and skillful” storytellers (Chicago Tribune)

“Milk Bread Beer Ice” is a road trip shared by a husband and wife who no longer communicate through meaningful dialogue. Fifty-year-old “Hazel” is forced to enter an alien workplace after the sudden death of her husband. In “Today Is the Day,” the village women gather together for their annual ritual of planting blisterlilies. And “Family Secrets” travels to DeKalb, Illinois, and the First World War, as the narrator searches for a missing year in her mother’s life . . . and unearths a surprising connection to Ernest Hemingway.

From a group of musicians who discover they share more than classical “Chemistry” to an unhappily married couple who may get a second chance, this remarkable collection, like the ageless orange fish of the title story, is filled with the wonder and magic of everyday life.

·       Fans of Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Louise Erdrich, Richard Russo, and other readable literary fiction·       Readers of Jane Austen and her many imitators·       Fans of “domestic” fiction that explores the difficulties of motherhood, family, and marriage “Infused with a sly humour, these poignant stories revel in the ordinary, with a few side trips to the sublime . . . both moving and wry.” —The Washington Post

“Carol Shields deals in profound issues of human experience, drawing them from everyday existence with vulnerable honesty and a good dose of pain-killing humor.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Some of the most complex accounts of human nature I’ve read in a short story.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Reading [these stories] gives you a sense of art spilling over into life. . . . Even the briefest and apparently arbitrary details of life seem incandescent.” —Toronto Star

The novels and stories of Carol Shields answer a daunting question: What makes a life? Her characters, from the unforgettable Tom and Fay of The Republic of Love to the vivid characters of Shields’s short stories, are drawn so perceptively as to become real. Shields once wrote of “the way a human life drains toward one revealing scene”—and these novels and story collections capture entire existences. Shields’s characters lead ordinary lives of extraordinary variety and emotional richness, crystallized by the precise eye of this award-winning fiction writer. Her great talents have been recognized with the Pulitzer Prize, Canada’s Governor General’s Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the UK’s Orange Prize, and many other honors.

Winner of the Marian Engel Award: Passion, longing, regret, and transformation infuse these twelve tales by one of our most "shrewd and skillful" storytellers (Chicago Tribune) "Milk Bread Beer Ice" is a road trip shared by a husband and wife who no longer communicate through meaningful dialogue. Fifty-year-old "Hazel" is forced to enter an alien workplace after the sudden death of her husband. In "Today Is the Day," the village women gather together for their annual ritual of planting blisterlilies. And "Family Secrets" travels to DeKalb, Illinois, and the First World War, as the narrator searches for a missing year in her mother's life . . . and unearths a surprising connection to Ernest Hemingway. From a group of musicians who discover they share more than classical "Chemistry" to an unhappily married couple who may get a second chance, this remarkable collection, like the ageless orange fish of the title story, is filled with the wonder and magic of everyday life.

Carol Shields (1935–2003) was born in Oak Park, Illinois. She studied at Hanover College, the University of Exeter in England, and the University of Ottawa. In 1957, she married Donald Shields and moved to Canada permanently. She taught at the University of Ottawa, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Manitoba, and served as chancellor of the University of Winnipeg. She wrote ten novels and three short story collections, in addition to poetry, plays, criticism, and a biography of Jane Austen. Her novel The Stone Diaries won the Pulitzer Prize, the Governor General’s Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award; it was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Shields was further recognized with a Canada Council Major Award, two Canadian National Magazine Awards, the Canadian Authors Association Award, and countless other prizes and honors.