SOURCE: "Small Is Beautiful," in The Canadian Forum, Vol. 72, No. 826, January-February, 1994, pp. 44-5.

[Summers is a Canadian journalist and short story writer. In the review below, she discusses the characters in The Stone Diaries.]

When The Stone Diaries was short-listed for the Booker Award earlier this fall, those of us who have long admired Carol Shields' work felt joy, but also what I can only describe as a glad combativeness. Maybe now Shields' books would get the admiration they deserve in Canada, we told one another. Maybe now the jury that neglected even to shortlist Shields' splendid novel, The Republic of Love, for a Governor General's Award would blush with shame. [In November, after this review was received, Carol Shields was awarded the Governor General's Award for Fiction, for The Stone Diaries.]

As I suppose everyone must know by now, The Stone Diaries is the fictional biography of...