Dressing Up for the Carnival (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Carol Shields
- First Published: 2000
- Type of Work: Short fiction
- Time of Work: 1990’s
- Setting: London, Manitoba, various cities in New York, Montreal, Halifax, and Lake Simcoe, near Toronto
- Principal Characters: Reta Winters, Lucy Porter, Edith-Esther, Ann, Grandfather, Beth, Lizzie
- Genres: Short fiction
- Subjects: New York, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Sex or sexuality, Twentieth century, Canada or Canadians, 1990’s
- Locales: New York, Canada, Montreal, Canada, Toronto, Canada, Manitoba, Canada, Halifax, Canada
Dressing Up for the Carnival, Carol Shields’s first collection of short stories since The Orange Fish (1989), marks her serious return to that form, though one should not expect to find a seamlessly connected, easily categorized group of tales. The stories differ substantially in length, point of view, subject matter, and overall effect. Though the title story, “Dressing Up for the Carnival,” suggests that the collection may be about a person’s ability to re-create himself or herself through various forms of artifice, the rest of the collection hints that Shields...
[The entire page is 1829 words long]
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