Shields, Carol. The Orange Fish. The Fourth Estate, 2004.
Reason read: June is short story month.
- Orange Fish – a couple finds their marriage saved by a lithograph of a fish.
- Chemistry – a group of people join the YMCA Winter Enrichment Program to learn the recorder.
- Hazel – after her philandering husband dies of a heart attack, Hazel learns to live again. As an aside, my father was the same age as Brian when he died, at fifty-five.
- Today is the Day – the planting of the blisterlily.
- Hinterland – Meg and Roy Sloan of Milwaukie, Missouri travel to France.
- Block Out – Meershank has writers block so travels to Portugal with his wife, looking for inspiration.
- Collision – Marta is waiting for Malcolm Brownstone, the Recreation and Resort Consultant, to arrive.
- Good Manners – Georgia Willow oversees instructing people on Canadian manners.
- Times of Sickness and Health – Kay is surrounded by people always telling her what to do.
- Family Secrets – when family secrets are all that you have, you tend to protect them.
- Fuel for the Fire – a daughter lets her aging and widower father burn anything he can find in her glorious fireplace.
- Milk Bread Beer Ice – Barbara and Peter Cormin are a sad couple with nothing to say after thirty-plus years of marriage.
Author fact: I found a Carol Shields Literary Trust website here. Really cool site.
Book trivia: Orange Fish is comprised of twelve short stories about friendships and relationships and won the Marian Engel Award in 1990.
Quote to quote, “How was he to know she would mistake a random disruption for lasting attachment?” (p 136).
Confessional: I just lost my Papa-in-law last week. When the protagonist of Orange Fish confessed that he wanted to run a dude ranch, I thought of Papa. He, too, had cowboy fantasies.
Setlist: Mozart, Haydn, Bach, Chopin, Handel, and Vivaldi.
BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Carol Shields: Too Good To Miss” (p 197).
~*LunaSea*~ 