In her first novel since the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Stone Diaries (1993; see separate entry), Carol Shields provides readers with a metaphor for life itself. In this later novel, the maze of Larry Weller's existence winds around itself, doubles back, dead-ends, and finally takes the right path. The novel observes Larry, an average, sort of muddled man, from ages twenty-seven to forty-seven as he heads, "straight toward the next thing that was going to happen to him."

Larry is a working-class guy from Winnipeg who has no particular goals in life other than to continue working at the florist's shop. He ended up a floral designer simply because the community college sent him information about the wrong program, and Larry being Larry, went along with it. He marries his pregnant girlfriend, Dorrie, and has a son in more or less the same hapless way. It is only...