The Box Garden

Rating:
Summary: Great introduction to Carol Shields
Review: Box Garden was a re-read for me, and I think I enjoyed it more the second time. Its protagonist, Charleen Forrest, is the sister of the suburban Mom and biographer/novelist who is the protagonist of two other Shields novels. Shields herself was a biographer/novelist and suburban mom. Shields is in top form in the Box Garden, piling on beautiful, original, totally apt metaphors, while capturing family scenes with economy and humor. Not only the biographer, but her husband and children show up in the Box Garden, and it would be a great first read for the lucky individual who is new to Carol Shields. In fact, I found the biographer's husband more alive in the Box Garden than in the other Shield's novels. Charleen is a woman with a teenage son who has yet to recover from her divorce of many years, a divorce which was not bitter, but entailed a great sense of loss and disillusionment. Charleen's mother, a totally repressed individual, is a great character, as well as the mother's new fiancee. The plot has something of a bizarre, but credible twist. My only complaint: Charleen's son is a little too well adjusted.

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Summary: A Shields Hero Takes a Trip & Discovers Life is OK
Review: Carol Shields's second novel, The Box Garden, quickly followed her first, Small Ceremonies, and features some of the same characters. But the books are not mirror images. They are both entertaining, insightful, humanistic--Shields cares deeply about her afflicted characters. Judith Gill, biographer, mother of two and happily married to Martin, narrated Small Ceremonies; younger sister and divorced poet Charlene Forrest tends The Box Garden. It is not surprising that two sisters can see the world so differently, but that Shields can make Judith and Charlene's disparate views of the same characters so authentic. Charlene is the quirkier. Within a few pages, she confesses a lack of courage. She is a published poet, at home with language, if not the world. Charlene is raising a son who is content with what the world and his mother offer. How did this happen, she muses? Charlene travels east from Vancouver to Toronto for her mother's wedding with her boyfriend, Eugene. The trip proves full of challenges and fulfillment, new friends and family reconnected, including Judith's clan. Charlene experiences a series of small epiphanies through these encounters. She allows herself escape from her small garden to a larger world, full of the unknown, but with hints of acceptance of life as it is. Shields's language is as rich as the assembled characters, which inlcude the mother of all negative mothers, defrocked priests and spiritual charlatans. Bring a pen and paper along for the read to jot down Shield's matchless discriptions of everyday life and families for future use.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable and very well crafted
Review: Charleen Forrest (nee McNinn) is , in good Carol Shields fashion, mostly an observer in her own life. Still in love with her absent, long divorced ex-husband, she alternates bouts of scathing self criticism with ones of gentle dithering. Three days involving enormous amounts of travel, excitement and revelation somehow leave Charleen with just a minor adjustment in her modus operandi. Readers of Ms. Sheilds "Small Ceremonies" will be interested to find Charleen is sister to that novel's biographer heroine, Judith (who makes an appearance here with her husband, Martin, and children as well).Showing the reader what can and cannot be revealed through words as Charleen concentrates most of her energies on correspondence with a mysterious botanist, and showing as well her curious gift for rendering the intangible into a three dimensional state ("Yes." I agree, forcing my voice into short plumes of enthusiasm, "Really good. So tender.") Carol Shields gives this small book the weight of her full talents

Rating:
Summary: The world before Prozac Nation emerged
Review: Most people suffering from Charleen Forrest's specific kind of neuroses would have rushed to the nearest shrink and demanded Prozac. But Charleen just had to suck it up, carry on, and make the best of her rather bizarre experiences with just trying to get through life, one day at a time.
It's a testimony to the skill of Carol Shields that we don't want to smack this woman upside the head and tell her to get herself some help; instead, we end up siding with her, embracing her oddities, and wanting to read more, more, more books by this wonderful author.