Shields is now included among an internationally known and well-respected group of contemporary Canadian writers that includes Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood. Shields has a talent for writing about women's lives, portraying women that have an intellectual life that is very much a part of who they are as individuals, and this is something she shares with Atwood and Munro.

In several interviews, Shields has expressed an admiration for Mavis Gallant and cites, as one of her early influences, John Updike. There are clear similarities to Updike in much of her work, specifically the use of almost mundane, ordinary characters and their ordinary lives as subject matter, but even Shields's style of writing shows some Updike influence.

The Stone Diaries in particular, though, shows signs of another possible influence; that of the "magical realism" of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and other South and Central American writers. Their...