I love the structure of this book, giving you both sides of an ordinary marriage on a weekend when the couple is separated. I love the priority Shields gives to ordinary lives, which are what most of us live, after all. Her observation and delicacy are brilliant, and she is always willing to take on an experimental way of telling a story. ( )

I love Carol Shields writing, and her patience in describing the everyday, and the unrelenting (often gentle) tug of wanting a little bit more; a little bit different. in 'Happenstance' she evokes the meaningfulness and intimacy that family and marriage provide its members well beyond the the everyday explanations. ( )

Carol Shields' deftness for the quietness of life is on display here, as a couple in the throes of the extraordinary cannot avoid the contrast with everyday existence. ( )

Nobody writes about ordinary people like Carol Shields. In this book a married couple, for the first time in their lives, spend a week apart. What happens in that week is told in two seperate 'novels'; the husband's story and the wive's story. Not that very much happens, they meet some new people, they have dinner, they walk around, they go about their lives. Mostly they think, about eachother and about themselves, their marriage, their children, their expectations and dissapointments in life. And when they get back together something has changed.
Shields has the ability to write about normal humans and ordinary events in a way that gives them enormous depth and resonance and in all their ordinariness something heroic. ( )

Interesting concept - 2 sides of a marriage, by reading each half, you end in the middle of the book. It was a great opportunity to see the other side - how the opposite partner might perceive you, and interpret your words or actions. But, I think the author missed the opportunity to really going below the surface. If left me wanting more. Both stories are pretty mundane, and maybe that is the point. ( )