SOURCE: Grimond, Kate. “Putting the Hum in Humdrum.” Spectator 284, no. 8949 (12 February 2000): 33.

In the following review of Dressing Up for the Carnival, Grimond asserts that Shields is at her best when describing details of everyday life, holding that the stories are varied, enjoyable, and contain elegant prose.

A concert harp falling from an upstairs window knocks a young woman to the ground in the snow. It chips a fragment off a bone in her leg, and the unhappiness in her life is exposed. An elderly couple living placidly in the country are put under great strain when meteorologists go on strike and there is, as a consequence, no distinguishable weather of any sort. Another couple, both artists, block up all the windows of their house in order to avoid paying a window tax. Their relationship begins to fall apart and it is not until they paint a window on...