Carol Shields is a well known American and Canadian novelist who portrays herself in almost all of her well written short stories. Shields wrote poetry, plays, biographies, literary criticism pieces, short stories, and novels but is best known for her written novels. Carol Shields was born on June 2nd, 1935 in Oak Park, Illinois and grew up in a suburban area on the west side of Chicago with her mother and father. Carol learned to read when she was four, and never stopped since then. Carol went to school at Oak Park High School, where she concentrated mostly on history and english and realized she wanted to pursue her career in these areas. In all her work, Shields shows mastery in her attention to the life of the human conditions; her depictions …show more content…
Carol uses the term “ILK” as to be her inner mind and tells the story about the bigger picture of things which relates to her other stories as well, because she continuously uses the story characters eyes as if they are her own. Carol mindset at this time was that you come into this world alone and that you die alone, therefore Carol didn’t care what others thought about her own opinions on facts. Carol was fascinated with what others did in their daily lives and found her discoveries out by writing her short stories, which she was very curious in doing so. For example as she writes, “By the way, that should be her ilk, not his, the L in my name standing for Lucy, after my no longer living and breathing Aunt Lucy”(Shields 440) This quote expresses how Carols life is shown and she used the name of the story character as if it was to be her deceased aunts, which I think really connects her life to the readers. And also the idea of her own thoughts on facts as she says, “Clothes can be folded so small that they fit inside a small glass marble”(Shields 441)This quote expresses how the big things in life can also be turned into the little things, and shows the whole idea of how the little things in life Carol takes them to big and makes the better out of