Small ceremonies, by Carol Shields

An early (1976), short novel by the author of The stone diaries, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995. Judith and Martin Gill live a quiet life with their daughter, Meredith, 16, and son, Richard, 12, in an unnamed small Canadian city.  He is a professor, specializing in Milton, while she has written two fairly well received biographies.  The book covers an academic year, beginning in September (“the real beginning of the year”) and ending in May.  The story is Judith’s, who is starting a new biography having made a rather disastrous foray into novel writing after a year’s sabbatical in England.  There she had secretly read the unpublished novels of the man whose house they were renting in addition to picking up the ceremony of “high tea” which the family still observes on Sunday evenings.   Her good friend, and a colleague of Martin’s, is Furlong Eberhardt, a novelist renowned as the quintessential Canadian author.   After a bout of writer’s block, he has just released a new novel to great acclaim – there’s even a movie deal.  Martin has had his own fallow period, and is engaged in an undisclosed project after his last paper was rejected for publication.  They all have secrets, which come out over the course of the book.  But as the author says, “Secrets are possible. And between people who love each other, maybe even necessary.”  181 pp.