Thirteen Hands and Other Plays

David E. Kemp, a former professor of drama at Queen’s University, is
the author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

In the four plays that make up this fine collection, Carol Shields
explores themes that are ever-present in her novels: love, family,
friendship, and the larger truths that lie beneath the surface of daily
life. Departures and Arrivals dramatizes, in 22 vignettes, how lives are
heightened and enlarged when viewed within the framework of public
spaces—in this case, an airport. Spanning the period 1920–1993, the
popular and much-produced Thirteen Hands is a musical that follows the
lives of different generations of women as they play the game they love:
bridge. Fashion, Power, Guilt and Charity of Families, a collaboration
with the author’s daughter, Catherine Shields, examines with humor,
insight, and affection the need to be part of a family and the equally
strong desire to escape the family. The institution of marriage is
dissected in Anniversary, written with Dave Williamson, a play that
centres on the interactions between two discontented, middle-class
suburbanite couples. All four plays testify to the author’s gift for
sparkling, insightful dialogue.