HAPPENSTANCE - Softcover

"Shields delivers a tour de force -- a marriage is the culmination of a million tiny moments and she strings them together with intense cumulative power." --Publisher's Weekly

"A perfect little gem of a novel."--The Toronto Star

"A delightful portrait of a partnership, full of quirky humour between two people who are at once familiar and strangers to each other ... a celebration of marriage as historical accident." --The Times (London)

"Carol Shields writes with delicacy and perception." --The Montreal Gazette

These two unique novels tell the stories of Jack and Brenda Bowman during a rare weekend apart in their many years of marriage. Jack is at home coping with domestic crises and two uncouth adolescents, while immobilized by self-doubt and questioning his worth as a historian. Brenda, travelling alone for the first time, is in a strange city grappling with an array of emotions and toying with the idea of an affair. Intimate and insightful yet never sentimental, Happenstance is a profound portrait of a marriage and the differences between the sexes that bring life -- and a sense of isolation -- into even the most loving of relationships.