Ugly Duckling Poetry

Carol Shields, Mary Swann, 1996
Mary Swann, a farmer's wife in rural Ontario, is murdered and dismembered by her possessive husband just before her first book of poetry is published. Years later, four different people - a feminist writer, an unscrupulous biographer, the local librarian who knew her and the man who published her poems - relive their connection to Swann as they travel to the first symposeum dedicated to her work.

This novel intelligently asks whether an uneducated person can create moving poetry, and how well we can know a literary figure, especially in this day and age when people are more concerened with building their careers on top of someone's work rather than finding the truth. Shields only misses a beat in the end, with a section written as a screenplay pastiche which underwhelms.

As a follow up, you might want to read Margaret Atwood's "Negotiating with the Dead", which is about the role of the author in the world, and which includes commentary on "Mary Swann" (Carold Shields was a good friend of Atwood's.)