The Flame and the Fury Book

I picked this book up at a small book sale while on vacation in the mountains, largely on the basis of it being one of the few works of fiction on sale that wasn't by Clive Cussler, Tom Clancey, or Danielle Steele. I had never heard of Carol Shields and had essentially no expectations. What I ended up with was a pretty good, if uneven, collection of stories.

Shields' stories take a deep dive into the emotional complexity of people's relationships, especially marriages, and examine the compromises and concessions that people make in life and love. But she also veers into some stranger, more experimental territory, with some stories that verge on magical realism, a story set in a sort of dystopian future where people are taxed on the basis of how many windows they have, and a story written without the letter "I" in it.

Some of the experiments don't pay off, and some of the stories feel like drafts that meander around the idea of an idea before stumbling to an unfulfilling close. But most of the stories are good to quite good, with some pretty affecting moments throughout, and the book finishes strong with a handful of its better stories stacked up at the end. At 210 pages, Dressing Up for the Carnival doesn't take very long to get through, and while I wouldn't rush this book to the top of your "to-read" list, if you can find it for a buck or so, like I did, it's certainly worth checking out.