Carol Shields won many literary awards over the course of a life cut tragically short (she died in 2003 at age sixty-eight, after a courageous five-year struggle with breast cancer that metastasized to her liver).

She is probably best known for The Stone Diaries, which won both a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It’s the story of the long life of an ordinary woman, Daisy Stone, seen through a collage of letters, newspaper clippings, and straight narrative told in multiple voices. But my three favorite Shields novels are probably among her lesser known: The Republic of Love, Larry’s Party, and Swann (which I read somewhere was her own favorite of her books).

In The Republic of Love, Fay McLeod, a never-married researcher of mermaids in her midthirties, and Tom Avery, the thrice-married (though now single) host of a late-night talk show at a local Winnipeg radio station, fall in love. These two unlikely lovers alternate in telling us the story of their developing relationship.

• What's your favorite Carol Shields book? Add a comment, share a review.

Larry’s Party describes twenty years in the life of Larry Weller—years defined by his liaisons with a variety of women, and his growing interest in designing garden mazes.

Swann is an academic satire—an exploration of the various ways different men and women interpret the work of the mysterious poet Mary Swann, each according to his or her own needs and prejudices.





Shields’s other works include her last, Unless; Happenstance: Two Novels in One about a Marriage in Transition, also told from the points of view of both halves of a couple; The Orange Fish; The Box Garden; and Small Ceremonies.

[Excerpted from More Book Lust]