First Carol Shields has to show off her hotel room - "the grandest hotel room I've ever stayed in," she says, moving from a spacious sitting room in the Pfister Hotel to a huge bedroom in which a truly amazing black bathtub is ensconced.
Next she insists in her kind, polite way on playing hostess, offering mineral water, fruit and cheese.Only then can Shields sit down, allow her photograph to be taken and answer questions about how it feels to have won the Pulitzer Prize for literature just one day earlier for her nove, "The Stone Diaries."
"I had no idea my book was nominated, no. It came completely out of the blue," she says, eyes glittering with contained excitement.
The call came from her publisher as she was having lunch in Minneapolis with the Canadian consul and about a dozen other people. Shields, who lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and was on a book tour in Minneapolis, was stunned.
"It was wonderful because I was with these very nice people; I wasn't alone in some hotel room. We had champagne and then we went out on a bridge over the Mississippi River - it was raining, a miserable day - and we took pictures."
Although she is delighted with the award, Shields is taking her celebrity in stride - just as you would expect of a well-brought-up woman of 59.
Asked if this most coveted of prizes will change her life, Shields shakes her head and purses her lips in disapproval.
"No, no -- not in the least," she says in her light voice, which has a slight Canadian accent. "I can't see how it possibly could. I live in Winnipeg, and my life goes on as it is. Writers aren't like film stars, you know. It's not the same thing."
"The Stone Diaries" is a small, intimate book that tells the story of ordinary men and women - especially women. The chapter titles tell the story: "Birth," "Childhood," "Marriage," "Love," "Motherhood," "Work," "Sorrow," "Ease," "Illness and Decline," "Death."
Not exactly a sizzling plot line, Shields admits.
"When I was writing it, I thought, `Good Lord, there's no plot!'" she says. "But then I've never been plot-driven."
"The Stone Diaries" is exactly that: a diary, that of Daisy Goodwill Flett, who was born in 1905.