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Happenstance:
two novels in one about a marriage in transition
1993
Happenstance originally
published 1980
A Fairly Conventional Woman originally published
1982
These two unique companion novels
tell the stories of Jack and Brenda Bowman during a rare
weekend apart in their many years of marriage. Jack is at
home coping with domestic crises and two uncouth adolescents
while immobilized by self-doubt and questioning his worth
as a historian. Brenda, traveling alone for the first time,
is in a strange city grappling with an array of emotions
and toying with the idea of an affair. Intimate, insightful
and never sentimental, Happenstance is a profound
portrait of a marriage and of those differences between
the sexes that brings life - and a sense of isolation -
into the most loving relationships.
 Read
an Excerpt
Click
here to read excerpt.
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A perfect little gem of a novel."
- Toronto Star
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Buy
the book
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Buy
in Canada:
Vintage Canada
Amazon.ca
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Buy in the
USA:
Penguin
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Review
This book has the unusual format
of containing two books in one: from front to back reads
"The Wife's story" and from back to front "The Husband's
story." The latter was written first, but the two are
written such that either can be read first.
The wife, Brenda Bowman, is a housewife
who has recently gained commercial success and cultural
renown as a quiltmaker. As the novel opens, she is leaving
her Chicago home to attend a quiltmaker's conference in
Philadelphia. Over the course of a week, she attends workshops
on various aspects of quiltmaking, makes friends, and
becomes increasingly intimate with a man she meets. On
the first night at the conference, she visits him in his
room and leaves there her brand new red raincoat, which
she purchased at an exorbitant price, and finds it missing
when she returns. She reflects much on her relationship
with her husband Jack and with the two teenage children
she has left at home.
Meanwhile, Jack remains at home.
His half of the story covers the same timespan but essentially
none of the same events. Jack is a historian who has been
working for years at the same book and is beginning to
doubt himself and his subject matter. He reads in a journal
that an ex-girlfriend, the girl he left for Brenda, has
just published a book on ostensibly the same topic. While
pondering the future of his career, Jack is overwhelmed
by crises: his best friend separates from his wife and
comes to stay at the Bowman house; the next door neighbor
attempts suicide. All the while, Jack ponders his own
role in history and the way that the recorded versions
of events often leave out the most significant points.
- Melissa Rachiele, Resident Scholar, allreaders.com
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As Shields handily demonstrates
here, a marriage is the culmination of a million tiny
moments, and she strings them together with intense
cumulative power....a tour de force."
- Publishers Weekly
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Carol Shields writes with delicacy
and perception."
- The Montreal Gazette |
Interview
Excerpt of interview with
Tom Ashmore
Stereo 103 - Winnipeg, 1981
| Int |
Her first
big success as an author was with Small Ceremonies
in 1976 for which she won a Canadian Author's award.
And The Box Garden came a year later? |
| CS |
Yes. |
| Int |
Now did
you write that novel in a year? How long did it take
you? |
| CS |
Yes, about
a year it took me. That novel, we were on sabbatical
that year. We went to France and we were living in
a little country town and I had a lot of time on my
hands. So I had no trouble at all writing that book
in a year. In fact, I realized for the first time
what a wonderful vocation writing is because it is
completely portable. WE can do it anywhere. And I
did that at the kitchen table at a little house we
rented in France. |
| Int |
You're your
own boss and your own disciplinarian and everything.
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| CS |
Absolutely. |
| Int |
I guess
that must be the nice part of it. How do you write?
Do you write in the morning, in the afternoon or what
is your regimen so to speak? |
| CS |
I am a fairly
orderly writer I think. I spend most mornings - not
in the summer and not in weekends - but most mornings
I try and spend two or three hours at it. That's about
as much as I can go. I do know other writers who are
able to go five or six hours. I can do that if I'm
rewriting, but the actual hewing out of that first
rough draft is hard going and I'm pretty tired after
three hours. |
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