January 2, 2008
On A Celibate Season
Carol Shields writes to Eleanor Wachtel: “Mail in Montjouvent is always welcome. (On the odd mail-less day the postman knocks and gives me his condolences.)” From Random Illuminations.
I just finished reading A Celibate Season, and enjoyed it so much, to my relief. For I hadn’t been sure: this was co-authored with Carol Shields and Blanche Howard, as well being an epistolary novel (and I don’t think I’d read such a thing since Heloise and Abelard in an undergrad survey course). Also that it was the last Carol Shields novel I’d left to read, which has me less sad than I thought I’d be, for I am grateful instead that I got to read it at all.
I enjoyed A Celibate Season as much as I’ve loved any book by Carol Shields, which is a lot, and it was especially interesting to read in light of A Memoir of Friendship, which was the collection of Shields’s and Howard’s real-life letters. Friends and letters seem to have been twin stars in Shields’s life, and how wonderful to see their intersection in both these books.
Glad to hear that you enjoyed it. I’ve been putting off reading it both because it was co-authored (I once read a quotation, I forget from who, that two people getting together to write a book is like three people getting together to have a baby; somebody is superfluous, and I mostly agree) and because it’s epistolary. I’m less reluctant now.