Carol Shields and Blanche Howard were friends for 30 years, starting in the early 1970s, despite a 12-year gap in age (Shields being the younger). Both were writers and feminists with strong marriages and large families. Howard was more politically and socially engaged, while Shields focused more on her writing and teaching. The two women were also fervent collaborators in a culture that tends to recognize individual achievement. Their joint epistolary novel, A Celibate Season, was rejected for years before finally being published by Coteau Books in 1990.

Their three decades of correspondence is a window on Canadian publishing in the late 20th century. They were constant readers, exchanging recommendations and opinions – not always mainstream – on writers from Hugh MacLennan to Atwood and Munro. Some comments were prescient: for example, in October 1977, Howard wrote this about Barbara Amiel: “Her judgment is not good.”

The two Howards, mother and daughter, have done a fine job of editing, supplementing the letters with contributions from friends and writers such as Wayson Choy, who traces his novel The Jade Peony back to an assignment from Shields. For the writer, the reader, or the devotee of Shields or Howard, the book is a wonderful resource. One thing missing, though, in a book so long and rich, is an index.

A Memoir of Friendship is a dialogue of grace and generosity: there’s no mistaking Howard’s genuine delight in the younger writer’s steady success. It is also surprisingly gripping, propelled by suspense over acceptance for publication, family vicissitudes, and – most moving and harrowing – health, especially that of Shields herself.