Shields, Carol Ann Warner

▪ 2004

      American-born Canadian novelist (b. June 2, 1935, Oak Park, Ill.—d. July 16, 2003, Victoria, B.C.), was celebrated for her insightful exploration of ordinary lives, attention to detail, serene humour, and impeccable style. Shields was best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Stone Diaries (1993), which attempted to capture the importance of the seemingly trivial details of living. The work also won the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award and was short-listed for the Booker Prize. She obtained a B.A. degree (1957) in English from Hanover (Ind.) College after having spent a year as an exchange student at the University of Exeter, Eng. There she met her future husband, Donald Hugh Shields; they married in 1957 and had five children. Shields earned an M.A. (1975) from the University of Ottawa, and she taught literature there and at the Universities of British Columbia and Manitoba. Her first novel, Small Ceremonies, received the Canadian Authors Association Award for best novel in 1977. Another novel, Swann (1987), won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel in 1988. Larry's Party (1997), which explored the life of the title character in a postfeminist world, won the 1998 Orange Prize for women's fiction. Her final novel, Unless, exposed the unhappiness of a mother struggling with the lifestyle chosen by her daughter. It won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and was short-listed for the Giller, Booker, and Orange prizes, as well as the Governor General's Literary Award. Shields was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1998 and a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2002.

* * *