Small Ceremonies

"This is simply a stunning novel, polished to perfection but never labored. . . . My recommendation is to buy this now and to indulge yourself by enjoying what is in fact a modern classic." -- Literary Review"Small Ceremonies is a fine [novel], lucid, and written with great assurance."-- The GuardianThe superb first novel from the author of The Stone Diaries, winner of the Governor General's Award, a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize.Judith Gill is a well-respected biographer who desperately wants to write fiction. When she joins her academic husband on sabbatical in Birmingham, she finds on the shelves of their rented flat the notes of a failed novelist. With considerable guilt, Judith decides to plagiarize one of the ideas and brings it home to Canada to work on. Frustrated by the creative process but determined to be more imaginative, Judith attends writing classes and later discovers that her tutor, suffering from writer's block, has ripped off 'her' idea. Once again, Shields focuses her sharp gaze on the small ceremonies of life in this novel of rare intelligence and wit. – Back cover of the 1995 Vintage Canada publication"A deft and tightly woven book, and proof, if such were needed, that the apparently sudden brilliance of The Stone Diaries was not sudden at all. . . . That this early novel of Shields' should prove a delight is not surprising, but her prose is constantly so in its supple inventiveness and perfect, enlightening simplicity."-- The Times (London) "...an achievement, a novel of ideas that also moves us." -- Observer (London)“Superb bitchiness” -- Financial Post“Witty and intelligent” -- Macleans