content: After the disappointment of Carol Shields' last book, the novel Larry's Party, I thought I would give her a second try with this collection of short stories. At times Shields doesn't disappoint - Dressing Up For The Carnival has a few wonderful stories - I particularly like 'Mirrors'. However, in many stories Shields tries to put an imaginative and poetic slant on the everyday banal - but sadly with little success. Most of the stories here seem forced, the result of some self-imposed writing excerise that in the end read like teenage creative writing exams. For such an accomplished writer many of these stories seem young and naive - even unfinished perhaps. Her themes of aging women, often disappointed by life or the infidelities of men, are bittersweet but in the end left me with nothing.