The Box Garden - Tapa blanda

"The novel's protagonist, Charleen Forrest, is an appealing combination of common sense and irrepressible idealism . . . [Carol Shields's] straightforward, low-key prose . . . brings us to the vital center of Charleen's emotional life." --Toronto Star
"Enlightening . . . draws a memorable portrait of a bitter mother and her daughters." --The New York Times

"A shrewd and skillful storyteller." --Chicago Tribune
"[The Box Garden] is fun, it is lively, it has intelligence . . . What makes [Carol Shields] special, apart from her flashing wit, her generosity and her insight into the extraordinariness of ordinary life, is her formal inventiveness, at once modest and daring, like a Modernist seamstress." --Literary Review

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.