Various Miracles

Carolyn Hlus was a lecturer in English literature at the University of Alberta, Edmonton.

Various Miracles, by Carol Shields, author of Small Ceremonies, The Box Garden, Happenstance, and A Fairly Conventional Woman, is a brilliant collection of 21 short, sometimes short short, stories, all turning on various miracles. Some of the stories, too, are metafictional. Shields’ style is gentle and chatty; it is characteristically female.

None of the miracles are of the Jeanne d’Arc variety; they are, instead, simple everyday miracles. In the title story, Shields implies that her miracles will be linked with chance, but they are not. Her miracles show that ordinary circumstances in the lives of ordinary men and women are miraculous. Miracles are not restricted to any one kind of happening. Memory is the guiding miracle in “Mrs. Turner Cutting the Grass,” a story about a middle-aged woman who once took hen pleasure voyageuring with wild abandon and now takes it touring around the world with her middle-aged sisters. So, too, does memory control “Dolls, Dolls, Dolls, Dolls,” a sensitive story exploring the relationship of two sisters through a historical visit to their shared doll’s play. The familiarity between a long-married couple who endured raising a handicapped child is the miracle in “Frailty,” the story of a couple emerging now on a new life. “A Wood” celebrates the bond between older and younger generations as the narrator enters the nervous world of the old awaiting the debut on stage of the young child. A show of independence and self-reliance makes miraculous an incident described in “Invitations,” a story about a woman who, by coincidence, receives five invitations to different but concurrent events and solves her dilemma by staying at home and reading. Shields’ characters, like portraits in sharply focused medieval temperas, come to life miraculously.

While most of the stories depend on characterization for their strength, some are metafictional and draw attention to qualities of their own make-up; they are, therefore, self-conscious. Some element in the art of writing is the subject of these stories and, in some way, it is reflected in the form of the story itself. “Words,” concerned with the relationship between silence and the breakdown of communication, emphasizes the potency of words. “The Metaphor Is Dead — Pass it On” is the metaphor-ridden lecture of a “gargantuan professor” intent on banishing metaphors from the kingdom of the English language. The story is presented with equally metaphor-ridden authorial comments.

Shields’ stories, those meritorious for characterization and metafiction alike, have a consistent voice. It is confident and composed, yet deeply intimate with the human condition. It is a strongly positive, feminist voice, another small miracle in Shields’ world of miracles.