Larry's Party - Carol Shields

[Jane B]

Larry's Party follows 20 years in the life of an ordinary man, Larry Weller, from the age of 26 in 1977 until 1997. Each chapter explores a different episode in Larry's life and we follow him through two marriages and a child, sickness and a career that develops from a florist to an internationally renowned maze creator. Mazes symbolise Larry's life and as he says "the whole thing about mazes is that they make perfect sense only when you look down on them from above" which is where we find Larry at the end of the book looking at his life with the benefit of hindsight and finally reaching the goal he didn't realise he was looking for. Carol Shields won the Orange Prize for Fiction for Larry's Party in 1998.