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Spotlights new fiction and non-fiction, picks out the best of the paperbacks, talks to authors and publishers, and unearths lost masterpieces. | | | | | LISTEN AGAIN | | | |
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| | PRESENTER | | | |
|  | | | | Defying any attempt to pigeonhole her skills and talents Mariella combines her television and radio career with that of a prolific journalist.
Over a fifteen-year TV career she has continued to impress both audiences and critics with her friendly, accessible and intelligent screen presence. Her projects run the gamut from current affairs to movies and the arts.
As a journalist she is currently the film critic for Harpers And Queen and has a weekly dilemma column in The Observer Magazine, while her book reviews and travel pieces appear regularly in the press. She has also been a member of the Booker-Mann Prize panel.
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|  | | Listen to Carol Shields Open Book tribute special
The Reading Clinic
Do you have a problem that concerns books? If so, Open Book's Reading Clinic wants to hear from you.
For instance, do you have a partner who never reads and want some suggestions as to what might entice them in to the world of literature?
Are there some books or genres that you have never managed to get your head round and to which you'd like an introduction?
What book do you give to the person who has read everything?
Where do I start with Proust?
What book should I take on a long train journey?
How do you get teenage boys to read?
If you want a full and frank discussion of your particular literary conundrum, then Open Book's Reading Clinic can prescribe the right book for you.
Please contact Open Book here with your literary ailment, giving as many details as you can including a daytime contact number if possible.
This week's programme
Open Book with Mariella Frostrup pays tribute to the Pullitzer prize-winning Canadian author Carol Shields who died from breast cancer in July this year.
The programme includes contributions from Christopher Potter, who was her editor at Fourth Estate and the person responsible for bringing her work to international attention, and the novelist Blake Morrison; and the writers Salley Vickers, Paul Bailey and Diane Roberts discuss her work.
Carol Shields published her first novel at the age of forty, when the youngest of her five children had started school. She described herself as the "mother who typed" and is most well known for her commitment to exploring the everyday domestic life of women. In this context she is often compared to Jane Austen, whose biography she wrote towards the end of her life.
The programme explores these themes in her work - domesticity, work and goodness, focusing particularly on the award-winning Stone Diaries, her last novel Unless and Larry's Party, winner of the Orange Prize.
The programme also includes a number of archive interviews and readings from her work by Carol Shields herself, providing an elegaic testimony to one of the world's foremost women writers.
Books by Carol Shields
Unless (Fourth Estate)
The Stone Diaries (Fourth Estate)
Mary Swann (Fourth Estate)
Larry’s Party (Fourth Estate)
The Republic of Love (Fourth Estate)
Happenstance (Fourth Estate)
Jane Austen (Phoenix Mass Market)
Dressing Up For The Carnival (Fourth Estate)
Fanfare: Fourteen Stories on a Musical Theme (BBC Consumer Publishing)
Small Ceremonies (Fourth Estate)
Various Miracles (Fourth Estate)
A Celibate Season (Fourth Estate)
Duet (Fourth Estate)
Carol Shields, Narrative Hunger, and the Possibilities of Fiction – Edward Eden (Editor), Dee Goerts (Editor) (University of Toronto Press Inc.)
The Box Garden (Fourth Estate)
E-mail Open Book here with your comments and views.
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RELATED LINKS
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Reading the Decades
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