Happenstance Paperback by Carol Shields

Product Details

• Publisher: Vintage Canada (1997-04-07)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 400 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780679308560
• Item Weight: 317.52 grams
• Dimensions: 8.0 x 5.2 x 1.02 cm

These two unique novels tell the stories of Jack and Brenda Bowman during a rare weekend apart in their many years of marriage. Jack is at home coping with domestic crises and two uncouth adolescents, while immobilized by self-doubt and questioning his worth as a historian. Brenda, travelling alone for the first time, is in a strange city grappling with an array of emotions and toying with the idea of an affair. Intimate and insightful yet never sentimental, Happenstance is a profound portrait of a marriage and the differences between the sexes that bring life — and a sense of isolation — into even the most loving of relationships.

About the Author

CAROL SHIELDS (1935–2003) is the author of The Stone Diaries, which won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Canada's Governor General's Award. Her other novels and short story collections include The Republic of Love, Happenstance, and Swann. Shields’s work has been translated into 33 languages.