Stop!, By: Carol Shields

Stop! was a fantastic little story by Carol Shields. I have it in her collection Dressing Up For The Carnival but I believe it can also be found in her Collected Stories.

Stop! follows the Queen. What she is the queen of, we don’t know. We learn that because of her “allergies” the Queen grows more and more reclusive. It seemed to me that she was a hypochondriac. Is the physician taking advantage of this, I wonder? The Queen retreats more and more from the world, from her children and the King. It’s interesting how the Queen’s perception of the world keeps her from doing the simplest of things. Stop! is the kind of short story that opens you up to what else the author has written.

After reading this short story, I wonder why I haven’t read any of her novels. I really aught to read The Stone Diaries. For those that don’t know, Carol Shields died of breast cancer in 2003 at the age of 68.

Short Story Monday is hosted by John Mutford at The Book Mine Set.