15th Canadian Challenge - 10th Review - The Box Garden

It appears that I have read this novel out of order.  The Box Garden was Carol Shields's 2nd novel, but shares several characters with Small Ceremonies, her first novel.  As far as I can tell, Small Ceremonies is a somewhat lighter affair and occurs a bit earlier in Judith's life.  It seems Shields decided to round out the family by introducing Charleen, Judith's wayward sister (who lives out in Vancouver) and came up with an interesting wrinkle to bring the sisters back together, namely to attend the 2nd wedding of their mother!  (As their mother is a fairly cantankerous woman who complains endlessly about the state of the world and her neighbours,* it is more than a little surprising that, Louis, her intended puts up with her.)  At any rate, while The Box Garden isn't exactly a darkly comic novel, it does seem a bit weightier than Small Ceremonies, and I probably should have read them in the correct sequence.  

In general, I enjoyed the novel though I found the sisters' mother totally exasperating.  I think rather than going into spoiler warnings, I'll just keep things vague.  There was one plot twist that I found pretty unconvincing and another plot point sort of played for laughs in the end that reads very differently now (over 40 years later).  I also wasn't completely sold on the last few pages which were essentially overheard dialogue at the wedding (rather than reporting events from Charleen's perspective, which is how the vast majority of the novel is written).  It was just a bit jarring. 

What I did like were some of Charleen's thoughts on the difficulty of being kind when that wasn't how one was raised, as well as how sometimes people (like her mother) get another chance at life (and love) even if they aren't particularly open to either.  Charleen takes a generous view of most people's actions rather than always thinking the worst of others (like her mother), which is something I am ok at on my (rare) good days and struggle with the rest of the time.  I found it a bit wry that the box garden of the title is for growing grass and not flowers or anything more decorative.  This novel isn't as good as The Stone Diaries or Unless, but it is a early example of her style.  I'm sort of still processing that Small Ceremonies and The Box Garden were written in her very early 40s, so she had a reasonably late start as a novelist.

* One thing that probably does deserve mention is that Charleen's mother was quite contemptuous of her neighbours even when they were mostly Scottish and Irish families (like herself), but they almost all moved away and non-white neighbours moved in (the sort that Catherine Hernandez writes about), and her mother keeps to herself even more.  If this was a feel-good story then one of the new neighbours would have broken through the shell of her reserve, but that did not happen, though I would not be surprised if her new husband ends up being a bit more outgoing and friendly with the neighbours.