Tom Avery, a child with rickets, was taken from his impoverished, ill mother and raised in the care of twenty- seven girls from the Department of Home Economics at the University of Manitoba. Moving forward to today, Fay Macleod, who works in a Folklore centre, decides to leave Peter, her partner of three years, as the love has left the relationship.

THE REPUBLIC OF LOVE brings Tom to light as a night-time DJ for a Winnipeg local radio station. As he lives a boring life while praising his unemployed and redneck listeners, he looks back on the marriages he's managed to accumulate and vows never again to marry a woman who cannot cook, or who is addicted to codeine, or has other drawbacks best discussed before marriage. Meanwhile, Fay muses on mermaids and decides that her family is far from reticent on personal matters and that most people's lives are a mess.

Roll on to page 167 when our two lonely characters meet at a party. While Tom can't stop thinking about the lady he met at the party, amusingly Fay can't remember what he looked like, the next day. In achingly slow passages, they start to get to know each other. and we can't wait to see if the outcome will bring them happiness or - given that this is an artistic novel - more disillusionment.

Carol Shields has won the Pulitzer Prize with her novel The Stone Diaries and collected other awards for her writing. She reflects modern life as she sees it, with the choices we all face. I found a disconnect with the text as tenses continually change from past to present.

We need to be in the correct frame of mind to read a literary novel; an attitude that says moody prose is better than moving the plot forward and it's okay to spend three pages making toast or a few chapters deciding who gets to keep the spatulas. If that style is suiting you at this minute, you'll enjoy draping yourself with passages from THE REPUBLIC OF LOVE. If you would rather read a fast-paced story that presents repeated challenges to the characters, I'm afraid you'll just have to pick up a romantic suspense novel.