SOURCE: "Small Ceremonies and the Art of the Novel," in Journal of Canadian Fiction, Vol. 28, No. 29, 1980, pp. 172-78.

In the essay below, Page discusses Shields's observations about fiction, biography, and sources in Small Ceremonies.

Carol Shields' first novel, Small Ceremonies (1976), is short, light and readable, a first-person study of nine months in the life of a woman of forty, scrutinizing herself and her circle. Thus reviewer John Parr appropriately describes it as "a familiar enough life story of quiet desperation except that Judith Gill, who tells her own tale of woe, enlivens it with many satiric flourishes." Another reviewer, Robert A. Lecker, says the book is "a reasonably entertaining story about the significant trivialities of everyday suburban existence," in which "nothing particularly exciting happens," and DuBarry Campau terms it "a pleasant, unpretentious book" with "wit, delicacy, and deft, realistic perceptions."

However, one should not think that the subject...