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    The Republic of Love: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Republic of Love: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Republic of Love: A Novel
    Ebook434 pages7 hours

    The Republic of Love: A Novel

    By Carol Shields

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Stone Diaries gives us a love story for the ages: the tale of two polar opposites on a rocky road to romance
    He’s a thrice-divorced late-night talk-show host. She’s an unmarried folklorist obsessed with mermaids. He lives for the present. She lives in the past. Both are leery of commitment. Neither has ever known lasting love. But when Tom Avery and Fay McLeod meet, it’s love—or at least lust—at first sight. And then fate starts to throw them curveballs.
    Shifting between Tom and Fay’s stories—from their complicated histories through their present-day angst—The Republic of Love features delightful secondary characters in the lovers’ friends and families, including Fay’s seemingly happily married parents and her beloved godmother, Onion. As Tom and Fay forge bravely ahead into a romantic minefield, they make startling discoveries about each other and themselves. With her trademark wit and irony, and a deep compassion for her hero and heroine, Carol Shields gives us a celebration of love in all its guises.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateDec 17, 2013
    ISBN9781480459625
    Unavailable
    The Republic of Love: A Novel
    Author

    Carol Shields

    Carol Shields’s novels include Unless; Larry’s Party, winner of The Women’s Prize; The Stone Diaries, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize; The Republic of Love; Happenstance; and Mary Swann. Dressing Up for the Carnivaland Various Miracles, collections of short stories, were later published as The Collected Stories. Brought up in Chicago, Shields lived in Canada from 1957 until her death in 2003.

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    Reviews for The Republic of Love

    3.5/5

    10 ratings9 reviews

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    • 3/5
      One is the loneliest number. And boy does it take a long time to get to two. This was the first Shields book I was exasperated by. Chapter after chapter filled with the quotidian minutiae of both Tom and Fay. It?s no secret they will get together, but it does seem to take forever. And considering their close orbits and near misses, it?s a bit of a wonder that it does. Their connection is reasonably direct, but it still takes a bit of chance to get it going.I did like how Shields made Fay a bit unconventional. She made decisions that I didn?t predict given my prejudice regarding ?love stories? and their storytelling crutches. I should have known better with this writer, but there you go. There are the usual moments of beautiful prose and a terrific sense of the absurd. The mere idea of a folklore center is wonderful as is Fay?s job as an Associate Folklorist. Delicious - ?She is a woman plagued with information, burdened with it, and always checking an impulse to pass it on to others. Is Peter Knightly, her lover of a thousand wasted days, aware that in certain Slavic villages young men on Good Friday fashion squirt guns from reeds and spray each other with water, and that this, of course, has strong sexual implications?? p 22And Tom?s job, though more tangible, is just as odd and romantic - he?s a nighttime DJ who hosts an eclectic and popular show of his own device. He loves a good routine and condemns himself for his three failed marriages. Luckily he?s not self-pitying. Here are some more of Shield's gems -?But he {Tom} has no children, no relatives, no property, none of the blown aftermath other people attach to their arrangements.? p 241?He set an eave of muffin afloat in his coffee?? p 78?What Fay uncovers are mostly fragments, blurred visions, partial accounts, and even these tentative offerings are underpinned by the suggestion of hard drink, and the deceptive algebra of the imagination trying to make a story out of the absence of linearity.? p 195?Tom puts this question to himself, finding it more speculative and interesting than the issue of hypochondria, a shameful condition boiled out of ego and abetted by loneliness.? p 391?Was she shriveling up inside her jangling singleness?? p 283
    • 4/5
      This is my favourite novel by Carol Shields, and the only one of hers that isn't dark. It's a literary novel but also a romance. I wish I could remember more details (must have been a sleep deprived nursing mother when I read it), but I remember liking this a great deal and plan to read it again so I can remember more about it.
    • 4/5
      I think I must have overlooked this at the time because it was the novel Shields wrote immediately before her two big international successes, The Stone diaries and Larry's Party. A shame, but anyway, better late than never - it seems to have aged very well. It's a clever, ironic look at the way rational and irrational thinking get mixed up with each other in our lives, and the compromises and suspensions of disbelief that we have to make to get them to work together. (Or, to put it another way, a thinly-disguised romantic comedy!) Enjoyable as an entertainment, and probably full of little in-jokes for anyone who knows Winnipeg, but also occasionally quite thought-provoking. Something that only really struck me when I'd finished the book was how cleverly Shields manages to tell us the key story about the older characters - her own contemporaries - whilst making us think that it's all about the young(ish) central characters.
    • 4/5
      The Republic of Love is the story of two people: Tom and Fay. Tom is forty years old and thrice divorced. Every week he attends meetings for the newly single, although he is no longer fresh out of a relationship. His life is filled primarily by these meetings, a few awkward dates and his career as a night-time disc jockey. Fay has never married, although she has come close a couple of times; She has, however, been in a number of years-long relationships. For some reason, neither Tom nor Fay seems able to make their romantic relationships stick.

      I own several of Carol Shields' novels, but this is the first one I have gotten around to reading. Incidentally, Carol Shields is an alumna of my alma mater, Hanover College. Pretty much our only famous one (unless you count good ol' Woody Harrelson, who may or may not have actually graduated - I think he got an honorary degree subsequently).

      The writing is quite highbrow, full of five dollar words and complicated sentences. This does make a rather nice change from all of the teen fiction I have been reading. For the most part, I really loved her writing style. Every so often, a particular sentence would strike me as a bit over the top, as though big words had been used solely for the sake of using big words.

      The narrative of the story moves along at a good pace, especially through the first half of the book. The format of the story, which follows the two main characters in alternating chapters, propels the reader forward, curious to discover how and when they will actually meet. I really loved the thought-provoking ideas about love, serendipity, marriage and being single that are woven throughout this novel. The theme of the interconnectedness of people's lives and the degrees of separation was particularly fascinating. It reminded me a lot of a slightly darker and more literary version of When Harry Met Sally, only not the plot with Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. It called to mind the little insert stories about how people met.

      I highly recommend this to literary fiction fans. For those who like easy reads, not so much. This is an excellent novel (thank goodness, since I do own several more by Shields!).
    • 3/5
      A 'literary novel', but I just found this dull. Shields likes to list everything: clothes in a wardrobe, food in a cupboard, most of the 100 guests at an anniversary party. And the couple were nice people, but I didn't believe in their 'love', just that they were lonely and decided to get together. So glad when I closed the last page.
    • 4/5
      Whilst I've enjoyed all of the Carol Shields books I've read, I think The Republic of Love' is the one I've most related to. The story, and intimate detail, of a couple coming together and the influences of their families, friends, colleagues and general environment is just so real. The story's beauty is it's detail, a small aside , a pause, transformating awareness that takes place in the blink of an eye.
    • 3/5
      Moving, lyrical love story
    • 3/5
      This book explores the backgrounds, including the past loves of Tom and Fay, including the backgrounds and loves of their families and close friends. Extremely detailed, Shields addresses the "myth" of love - the mermaid being a mythical creature makes an interesting topic of Fay's life work. Sheilds' observation that love is a republic, not a kingdom, and is democratic and potential to all of us, was an interesting one. She also observes that today it is permissible to talk about jobs, money, acquisitions, sex, but love is not really discussed. (The book was written in 1992 but it still applies seventeen years later.) Although at times I found the details a bit mind-numbing, and the descriptions too ever-present, over all I liked it a lot.
    • 4/5
      Another airport book purchase (can't stand the thought of a long flight without a book to read). Picked it up from the 'Canadian fiction' section in the bookshop at Toronto Pearson International. It was a perfect choice: kept me absorbed while waiting for the plane, while flying and while waiting for the next flight. It's a fairly straightforward love story, with interesting asides about mermaids thrown in. Both the lead characters struck me as a bit drippy (sorry) and in need of a good shake at times and I wasn't completely convinced by the storyline involving the elderly parents of the female protagonist. But those are minor gripes - it was a good read and painted a realistic picture of Winnipeg through the changing seasons.