Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Box Garden: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Box Garden: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Box Garden: A Novel
    Ebook239 pages3 hours

    The Box Garden: A Novel

    By Carol Shields

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The story of a woman dancing on the edge of a difficult life
    Ever since her husband left her—seemingly vanishing into thin air—Charleen Forrest has supported herself and her fifteen-year-old son on what she earns as an obscure poet and part-time gofer for an even more obscure scientific journal. But when her estranged mother remarries, prompting an unplanned reunion, Charleen finds herself moving out of her familiar existence.
    A dazzling counterpoint to Shields’s debut novel, Small Ceremonies, imbued with her scathing wit and dead-on observations, The Box Garden is an unforgettable portrait of a woman who finds transformation—and happiness—where she least expects it.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateDec 17, 2013
    ISBN9781480459571
    Unavailable
    The Box Garden: A Novel
    Author

    Carol Shields

    Carol Shields’s novels include Unless; Larry’s Party, winner of The Women’s Prize; The Stone Diaries, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize; The Republic of Love; Happenstance; and Mary Swann. Dressing Up for the Carnivaland Various Miracles, collections of short stories, were later published as The Collected Stories. Brought up in Chicago, Shields lived in Canada from 1957 until her death in 2003.

    Read more from Carol Shields

    Related to The Box Garden

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Elizabeth Wetmore

      Oct 7, 2020

      Elizabeth Wetmore
      2 min read

    • Article

      Book Extract

      Jan 20, 2020

      My year off was also interesting, in that I didn’t feel any less loved, or cherished, or wanted. Why? Because my life is already rich with soulmates, and I got the chance to behold that. You don’t have to shag someone for them to be a soulmate. We do

      7 min read

    • Article

      Woman About Town

      Jul 28, 2022

      Woman About Town
      5 min read

    • Article

      Foxes

      Jun 15, 2019

      What’s worth happening happens in deep woods. Or so my daughter tells me. Her plotlines: In the deep woods someone is chasing, someone else is getting hacked. Hatchets are lifted, brought downdowndown. Men stutter blood onto snow. A cast of animals—s

      17 min read

    • Article

      The Book of Loki

      Mar 12, 2018

      The Book of Loki
      20 min read

    • Article

      People Are Strange

      Oct 13, 2019

      People Are Strange
      5 min read

    • Article

      My lost WEEKEND

      Jan 15, 2020

      “A hush has descended over Dear Towers. The sounds of a man attempting to play Snooker Loopy by Chas & Dave on the piano are entirely absent. Neither is there anybody practising – if that’s the right word – My Old Man Said Follow the Van on the ukule

      3 min read

    • Article

      Trying To Be More Like Dexter

      Aug 3, 2020

      Family dinners had become a rarity over the past few years, but the national emergency brought them back with a rush. There were lots of questions and very few answers to offer at that point, but my wife said very firmly that the most important thing

      2 min read

    • Article

      Where is THE LOVE?

      May 12, 2019

      Where is THE LOVE?
      3 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2021

      Hooknose, Canada Goose, slit-eyed Toucan.Porch monkey, baboon, trash-talking magpie.I cover my head in adoration, just as you doff your hat.Do not rub my head. Don’t even think about it.I bob as I chant, I pray as I breathe. Does that disgust you?I s

      2 min read

    • Article

      Lech

      Feb 8, 2022

      Lech
      4 min read

    • Article

      My Best Friend

      Oct 1, 2020

      My Best Friend
      6 min read

    • Article

      SHORT STORY by MARGARET ATWOOD

      Mar 22, 2023

      SHORT STORY by MARGARET ATWOOD
      7 min read

    • Article

      SHORT STORY by MARGARET ATWOOD

      Mar 22, 2023

      SHORT STORY by MARGARET ATWOOD
      7 min read

    • Article

      Dawn Neesom Mind Of My Own

      Nov 1, 2022

      Emotions always run higher than usual at this time of year, which means for the lonely, lost and bereaved it’s also incredibly hard. My feisty and fearless friend Patsy is facing her first Christmas without her beloved husband Nobby. They got toget

      3 min read

    • Article

      Snow White Gets Dirty

      May 30, 2023

      Snow White Gets Dirty
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Letter Box

      Sep 1, 2022

      Hi, Everyone, I really love this magazine! I got my first issue when I think I was around nine and I loved it! I really love fish and I breed guppies. We have so many fish (mostly guppies) that we have four fish tanks! I also enjoy reading. My favori

      7 min read

    • Article

      Letters From The Pandemic

      Apr 27, 2020

      Letters From The Pandemic
      8 min read

    • Article

      Diary Of A Country Mouse

      Mar 3, 2020

      THURSDAY, 10 DECEMBER. Giles shows us the sample mice and I am, as if for the first time, overcome with joy. Perhaps when I was a child I had feelings like this—but not in many years. I look, for instance, at a small gray mouse, smaller than the othe

      17 min read

    • Article

      Dear Frankie

      Aug 1, 2021

      Dear Frankie
      19 min read

    • Article

      The Idiots

      Feb 26, 2021

      The Idiots
      18 min read

    • Article

      Blooming Shame

      Feb 13, 2022

      Blooming Shame
      2 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2020

      The purpose of being alive is to carry a sequence of code.And so, being adopted, I’m part of a plot, a sleeper cellin enemy territory, quietly working against the systemfrom within. It’s fall, I’m on an ancestry website signing up for a DNA kit,becau

      4 min read

    Reviews for The Box Garden

    4/5

    5 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I love her writing.
    • 3/5
      A divorced woman goes back home to celebrate her mother's second wedding. Wry observations of family and relationships, and powerful characterisations - especially of the life-squelching elderly mother.
    • 4/5
      I?ve said it before and I know I?ll say it again, but I still plan on reading all of Carol Shields? work. This is my fourth Shields? novel, and while it wasn?t as good as the other three, The Stone Diaries, Unless, and Larry?s Party, it still ranks as a 4 star book. The three I had previously read were the last three she wrote, while The Box Garden was written in 1977 and was only her second novel.Charleen Forrest is a divorced poet with a son. Charleen has all the ordinary issues with her ex-husband and with her mother (who doesn?t?), but the way Shields writes about them are anything but ordinary.?My breakdown too; that?s the part I didn?t confess, the part I conceal even from myself except when I am absolutely alone in the middle of the night as I am now. The day Watson left, everything more or less fell apart for me, too. The world, which I was just beginning to perceive, was spoiled. Everything ruined, everthing scattered. Scattered like me, the way I?m scattered through this house.?When I read her books, it is as if she is peering into my mind and soul and speaking directly to me. She always goes to the heart of the matter. I regret her early death from cancer. I feel like the literary world missed out on some wonderful stories that she unfortunately had to leave unwritten. You know the question that?s always asked about which author you?d like to meet and have dinner with, alive or dead? Without a doubt, mine would be Carol Shields.?I suppose this is why I love novels, because novels are not just about what people do, but they?re about what people think.? ? Carol Shields
    • 5/5
      A small, wonderful story.