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Unless
Forty-four-year-old Reta Winters, wife, mother, writer, and translator, is living a happy life until one of her three daughters drops out of university to sit on a downtown street corner silent and cross-legged with a begging bowl in her lap and a placard round her neck that says "Goodness."
The final book from Pulitzer Prize-winner Carol Shields, Unless is a candid and deeply moving novel from one of the twentieth century's most accomplished and beloved authors.
harpercollins.com
The final book from Pulitzer Prize-winner Carol Shields, Unless is a candid and deeply moving novel from one of the twentieth century's most accomplished and beloved authors.
harpercollins.com
255 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2002
527 people are currently reading
12279 people want to read
About the author
Carol Shields
70 books657 followersCarol Ann Shields was an American-born Canadian author. She is best known for her successful 1993 novel The Stone Diaries, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General's Award. Her novel Swann won the Best Novel Arthur Ellis Award in 1988.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,333 reviews
June 28, 2022
Shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2002 and book a lot of people were hyping... an understated quiet book that I am afraid just couldn't get my attention - and in addition the hype around the book probably gave me a vastly over zealous expectation!
The teller of the story, writer Reta Winters has an idyll life until she finds out that her eldest daughter, has dropped out of higher education and now begs on a street corner with a sign saying 'Goodness'. The initial concept did grab my attention... unfortunately that was the last time my attention was grabbed when reading this. 3 out of 12.
2003 read
The teller of the story, writer Reta Winters has an idyll life until she finds out that her eldest daughter, has dropped out of higher education and now begs on a street corner with a sign saying 'Goodness'. The initial concept did grab my attention... unfortunately that was the last time my attention was grabbed when reading this. 3 out of 12.
2003 read
June 17, 2020
Compulsively readable, this main character comes from a very long, proud lineage of other literary protagonists who get totally fucked over by their offspring. Although it doesn't come close to the pathos & articulation thereof of, say, Lionel Shriver's "We Need to Talk About Kevin", nor the titan-in-decay tableau which is Philip Roth's "American Pastoral"--"Unless" is way more playful and more accessible. It is the same old story, though. &, unless anything happens to me, I will definitely get my hands on every single thing Carol Shields has written or will write!!
July 7, 2014
Did I tell you I just clocked up a count of just over 500 novels read, according to my GR novels shelf? Hey, how about that. It must make me some kind of authority now. I can dish out advice, start up a helpline, I know which novel to attach to the St Bernard dog to take to the fallen climber in the Alps.
Except, I’m actually getting worse at picking novels to read. I just checked, and 13 out of 27 novels read so far this year have got a 1 or 2 star rating, i.e. I hated them & felt they were a blight on my life. Why is that?
Part of the problem is that when I find an author I like I never read anything else by them, it would be too obvious (recent exceptions : Edward St Aubyn and Jean Rhys). Also, I think I’m easily led by reviewer enthusiasm. This explains The Shock of the Fall, Gone Girl, Little Big and Her. But glorious reviews also led me to Life After Life, Animals and The Death of Bees, three recent books which delighted my very left ventricle.
You can’t even rely on a novel’s “classic” status, whatever that consists of. I Capture the Castle and The Man Who Loved Children turned out to be insufferable and worthy of forceful defenestration, but Lucky Jim, Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Talented Mr Ripley were all ripping good fun.
This present volume, Unless, winged its way to me garlanded with shortlists (2003 Booker & Orange) & dripping with critical fluids. But they were all wrong. It was dire.
A comfortable late 40s doctors’ wife in Ontario has three lovely daughters. The eldest, 19 year old Norah, drops out of university to become a street person. Sits on the pavement in Toronto with a begging bowl holding a sign saying GOODNESS. This is not an uninteresting circumstance – Philip the Roth had a similar thing going on in American Pastoral. But it’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it, and Carol Shields does a Lionel Shriver by mentioning the awful horror briefly then spending 100 plus pages maundering over every last possible detail of her comfortable middle-class-translating-wise-feminist-books-from-the-French-growing-old-gracefully-but-now-wondering-what-the-point-of-it-all-is-cutesy-artsy Canadian life. After p 120 I knew what the daughter was up to. The front of her sign said GOODNESS but the back said ME, MOTHER, PUT A SOCK IN IT.
Except, I’m actually getting worse at picking novels to read. I just checked, and 13 out of 27 novels read so far this year have got a 1 or 2 star rating, i.e. I hated them & felt they were a blight on my life. Why is that?
Part of the problem is that when I find an author I like I never read anything else by them, it would be too obvious (recent exceptions : Edward St Aubyn and Jean Rhys). Also, I think I’m easily led by reviewer enthusiasm. This explains The Shock of the Fall, Gone Girl, Little Big and Her. But glorious reviews also led me to Life After Life, Animals and The Death of Bees, three recent books which delighted my very left ventricle.
You can’t even rely on a novel’s “classic” status, whatever that consists of. I Capture the Castle and The Man Who Loved Children turned out to be insufferable and worthy of forceful defenestration, but Lucky Jim, Where Angels Fear to Tread and The Talented Mr Ripley were all ripping good fun.
This present volume, Unless, winged its way to me garlanded with shortlists (2003 Booker & Orange) & dripping with critical fluids. But they were all wrong. It was dire.
A comfortable late 40s doctors’ wife in Ontario has three lovely daughters. The eldest, 19 year old Norah, drops out of university to become a street person. Sits on the pavement in Toronto with a begging bowl holding a sign saying GOODNESS. This is not an uninteresting circumstance – Philip the Roth had a similar thing going on in American Pastoral. But it’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it, and Carol Shields does a Lionel Shriver by mentioning the awful horror briefly then spending 100 plus pages maundering over every last possible detail of her comfortable middle-class-translating-wise-feminist-books-from-the-French-growing-old-gracefully-but-now-wondering-what-the-point-of-it-all-is-cutesy-artsy Canadian life. After p 120 I knew what the daughter was up to. The front of her sign said GOODNESS but the back said ME, MOTHER, PUT A SOCK IN IT.
May 2, 2016
UPDATE May 2016: Just found out this is going to be a movie, starring Catherine Keener as Reta! It will probably play the Toronto Film Festival in the fall. Looking forward to it!
***
In Carol Shields’s Unless, Reta Winters, a happy, middle-aged novelist and translator, a wife and mother of three children, discovers that her 19-year-old daughter has dropped out of university and is panhandling on the streets of Toronto holding a sign that reads “Goodness.”
That one-sentence synopsis, while accurate, doesn’t begin to suggest the rich detail and generosity of spirit behind Shields’s final novel.
The book is partly a mystery, an attempt to solve the question: “What happened?” As Reta fills in details about her husband, her children, her neighbours, her friends, her mother-in-law, the eminent French writer whose memoirs she’s been translating for years, we begin to get a sense of the rhythms and layers of her life – of anyone’s life, really.
And then there are the characters in Reta’s new novel, a sequel to her light comedy My Thyme Is Up. As she sinks deeper into despair, unable to protect her homeless daughter, she focuses on moving the lives of her characters around to their inevitably happy ending.
This passage is key:
Each chapter in this book – and indeed the book’s title itself – takes its name from one of those “odd pieces of language.” And gradually the details begin to form a coherent whole.
So many scenes made me reflect on my own life, recognize how certain moments can be so fleeting. Shields helps capture them in all their wonderful ordinariness. After an exchange between Reta and one of her daughters, Reta thinks:
So much clear-eyed wisdom about life. I could go on quoting passages – there are so many – but I'll let you experience them yourselves.
***
In Carol Shields’s Unless, Reta Winters, a happy, middle-aged novelist and translator, a wife and mother of three children, discovers that her 19-year-old daughter has dropped out of university and is panhandling on the streets of Toronto holding a sign that reads “Goodness.”
That one-sentence synopsis, while accurate, doesn’t begin to suggest the rich detail and generosity of spirit behind Shields’s final novel.
The book is partly a mystery, an attempt to solve the question: “What happened?” As Reta fills in details about her husband, her children, her neighbours, her friends, her mother-in-law, the eminent French writer whose memoirs she’s been translating for years, we begin to get a sense of the rhythms and layers of her life – of anyone’s life, really.
And then there are the characters in Reta’s new novel, a sequel to her light comedy My Thyme Is Up. As she sinks deeper into despair, unable to protect her homeless daughter, she focuses on moving the lives of her characters around to their inevitably happy ending.
This passage is key:
A life is full of isolated events, but these events, if they are to form a coherent narrative, require odd pieces of language, little chips of grammar (mostly adverbs or prepositions) that are hard to define, since they are abstractions of location or relative position, words like therefore, else, other, also, thereof, heretofore, instead, otherwise, despite, already, and not yet.
Each chapter in this book – and indeed the book’s title itself – takes its name from one of those “odd pieces of language.” And gradually the details begin to form a coherent whole.
So many scenes made me reflect on my own life, recognize how certain moments can be so fleeting. Shields helps capture them in all their wonderful ordinariness. After an exchange between Reta and one of her daughters, Reta thinks:
When she looks back on her life, when she’s a fifty-year-old Natalie, post-menopausal, savvy, sharp, a golf player, a maker of real estate deals, or eighty years old and rickety of bone, confined to a wheelchair – whatever she becomes she’ll never remember this exchange between the two of us outside the bathroom door… Her life is building upward and outward, and so is Chris’s. They don’t know it, but they’re in the midst of editing the childhood they want to remember and getting ready to live as we all have to live eventually, without our mothers. Three-quarters of their weight is memory at this point. I have no idea what they’ll discard or what they’ll decide to retain and embellish, and I have no certainty, either, of their ability to make sustaining choices.
So much clear-eyed wisdom about life. I could go on quoting passages – there are so many – but I'll let you experience them yourselves.
October 10, 2017
This is another of the books that was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2002, which is the year chosen for the latest historic shortlist project in The Mookse and The Gripes group.
This is a quiet but rather impressive book. On the surface not much happens. The narrator Reta Winters is a writer and translator, happily married with three daughters. The book follows her as she comes to terms with the strange behaviour of her eldest daughter, who has dropped out of university and now begs at a street corner bearing a sign saying "Goodness".
The book is largely about the inner life of a writer, and the parts about the process of writing a novel, the nature of a writer's relationship with a translator and the role of the editor are fascinating and often very funny. The nature of goodness and what this means is also explored, and some of the chapters are letters which Reta has written but not sent, usually feminist critiques of articles she has read.
One other thing that interested me was the chapter titles, most of which are one word, and generally neutral linking words (Unless itself being a typical example)
For me the whole thing worked very well. I have never read anything by Shields before but I will probably read more.
This is a quiet but rather impressive book. On the surface not much happens. The narrator Reta Winters is a writer and translator, happily married with three daughters. The book follows her as she comes to terms with the strange behaviour of her eldest daughter, who has dropped out of university and now begs at a street corner bearing a sign saying "Goodness".
The book is largely about the inner life of a writer, and the parts about the process of writing a novel, the nature of a writer's relationship with a translator and the role of the editor are fascinating and often very funny. The nature of goodness and what this means is also explored, and some of the chapters are letters which Reta has written but not sent, usually feminist critiques of articles she has read.
One other thing that interested me was the chapter titles, most of which are one word, and generally neutral linking words (Unless itself being a typical example)
For me the whole thing worked very well. I have never read anything by Shields before but I will probably read more.
December 26, 2013
You wouldn't expect it from her, but Carol Shields has written a naughty book. Put your yellow highlighter down: There's no sex, but the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Stone Diaries" is doing something indecorous here -- ribbing our notions of grief, even snickering at what inspires us.
Her latest novel, a mischievous monologue called "Unless," begins with lamentations. Reta Winters once had it all: a loving partner who's a successful doctor, three smart daughters, a beautiful house outside Toronto, and a stimulating career as a translator. She had heard of sadness and pain, of course, but she confesses, "I never understood what they meant."
Until now. "Happiness is not what I thought," she concludes. "Happiness is the lucky pane of glass you carry in your head. It takes all your cunning just to hang on to it, and once it's smashed you have to move into a different sort of life." Now, in this new dark world, it's clear to her that the past was filled with "impossibly childish and sunlit days before I understood the meaning of grief."
Who needs a downer like this? That's what's so strange: It's a very funny book. Even in the middle of her anguish, she suddenly looks into the camera and says with deadpan sarcasm, "I am attempting to 'count my blessings.' Everyone I know advises me to take up this repellent strategy."
But nothing can alleviate the pain caused by her daughter's decision to drop out of college and "live a life of virtue." For months now, 19-year-old Norah has been sitting on a street corner, begging, with a sign around her neck that says, "GOODNESS." She won't speak to her parents and friends, or even acknowledge their presence.
For Reta, this calamity calls everything into question, particularly her family's baffling reflex to carry on with normal life. The melody of their pleasant days stays essentially the same; only the beat changes. At night, her husband sets aside his study of trilobites to investigate mental illness. She checks out a few books on the nature of goodness.
Like the friends of Job, everyone offers Reta reasonable, but ultimately unsatisfying counsel: Norah must be depressed; it's just a phase; her hormones are out of balance; she's had a nervous breakdown; she broke up with her boyfriend; she's suffering from post-traumatic stress. All reassure her that it has nothing to do with the quality of her mothering, but Reta knows better.
And then she slides around again and realizes that her daughter must be responding to the powerless condition of women by rejecting the chauvinistic world and retreating into "a kind of impotent piety."
Aha -- a cause to fight! Suddenly, her women's group seems more relevant than ever. The gains of the feminist movement were paltry, and the movement itself is stalled. There are letters to write, outrage to be registered (calmly), and corrections to be made (without sounding shrill).
Shields has captured something remarkably subtle and unsettling. Reta's grief would be so much cleaner if she weren't cursed with such ironic self-awareness, with moments of realizing that's she's a "self-pitying harridan." How can she speak of her bottomless agony while translating the work of a Holocaust survivor? How can she stomach the embarrassment of reading her own "whining melodramatic scrawl"?
On the other side, she can't keep her own wit from corroding every moment of inspiration. No sooner does she sigh with teary relief than she realizes such moments are "fake jewels -- twin babies in snowsuits" -- that allow her "to be tipped from skepticism to belief. "
Even as she begins studying virtue, she feels compelled to note: "I am not, by the way, unaware of the absurdity of believing one can learn goodness through the medium of print. Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose."
As a writer, Reta can't resist the reflex to stand outside herself, analyzing, calling into question every motive, pushing her emotions and thoughts in one direction or another just to see where they lead.
She also begins writing a comic romance, knowing full well that she's retreating from the stubborn problems of her real life to enter a fictive world under her control. But how, this wily novel asks, can a placebo work if you know it's a placebo? What can keep the witty, self-aware person from ricocheting between gassy inspiration and bitter shame? In her own sophisticated way, Shields has sneaked a whoopee cushion under the soft pillow of self-pity.
Nothing is more surprising, though, than the story's ending. In a weird translation into comedy -- with some brilliant commentary on the publishing world -- the novel suddenly wraps everything up neatly. Of course, Reta notices this tidy denouement, too. After all, throughout the story she's one step ahead of us: "Novelists," she admits, "are always being accused of indulging in the artifice of coincidence."
Since we first met her, Reta's taunts have trained us to be skeptical of all such artifice, but, come on, Shields suggests with a wink, everybody needs to rest sooner or later. And ultimately, what other indulgence can we enjoy more than the wonderful coincidence of being alive together? This is one of those books that make you regret that reading is a solitary pleasure.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0509/p1...
Her latest novel, a mischievous monologue called "Unless," begins with lamentations. Reta Winters once had it all: a loving partner who's a successful doctor, three smart daughters, a beautiful house outside Toronto, and a stimulating career as a translator. She had heard of sadness and pain, of course, but she confesses, "I never understood what they meant."
Until now. "Happiness is not what I thought," she concludes. "Happiness is the lucky pane of glass you carry in your head. It takes all your cunning just to hang on to it, and once it's smashed you have to move into a different sort of life." Now, in this new dark world, it's clear to her that the past was filled with "impossibly childish and sunlit days before I understood the meaning of grief."
Who needs a downer like this? That's what's so strange: It's a very funny book. Even in the middle of her anguish, she suddenly looks into the camera and says with deadpan sarcasm, "I am attempting to 'count my blessings.' Everyone I know advises me to take up this repellent strategy."
But nothing can alleviate the pain caused by her daughter's decision to drop out of college and "live a life of virtue." For months now, 19-year-old Norah has been sitting on a street corner, begging, with a sign around her neck that says, "GOODNESS." She won't speak to her parents and friends, or even acknowledge their presence.
For Reta, this calamity calls everything into question, particularly her family's baffling reflex to carry on with normal life. The melody of their pleasant days stays essentially the same; only the beat changes. At night, her husband sets aside his study of trilobites to investigate mental illness. She checks out a few books on the nature of goodness.
Like the friends of Job, everyone offers Reta reasonable, but ultimately unsatisfying counsel: Norah must be depressed; it's just a phase; her hormones are out of balance; she's had a nervous breakdown; she broke up with her boyfriend; she's suffering from post-traumatic stress. All reassure her that it has nothing to do with the quality of her mothering, but Reta knows better.
And then she slides around again and realizes that her daughter must be responding to the powerless condition of women by rejecting the chauvinistic world and retreating into "a kind of impotent piety."
Aha -- a cause to fight! Suddenly, her women's group seems more relevant than ever. The gains of the feminist movement were paltry, and the movement itself is stalled. There are letters to write, outrage to be registered (calmly), and corrections to be made (without sounding shrill).
Shields has captured something remarkably subtle and unsettling. Reta's grief would be so much cleaner if she weren't cursed with such ironic self-awareness, with moments of realizing that's she's a "self-pitying harridan." How can she speak of her bottomless agony while translating the work of a Holocaust survivor? How can she stomach the embarrassment of reading her own "whining melodramatic scrawl"?
On the other side, she can't keep her own wit from corroding every moment of inspiration. No sooner does she sigh with teary relief than she realizes such moments are "fake jewels -- twin babies in snowsuits" -- that allow her "to be tipped from skepticism to belief. "
Even as she begins studying virtue, she feels compelled to note: "I am not, by the way, unaware of the absurdity of believing one can learn goodness through the medium of print. Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose."
As a writer, Reta can't resist the reflex to stand outside herself, analyzing, calling into question every motive, pushing her emotions and thoughts in one direction or another just to see where they lead.
She also begins writing a comic romance, knowing full well that she's retreating from the stubborn problems of her real life to enter a fictive world under her control. But how, this wily novel asks, can a placebo work if you know it's a placebo? What can keep the witty, self-aware person from ricocheting between gassy inspiration and bitter shame? In her own sophisticated way, Shields has sneaked a whoopee cushion under the soft pillow of self-pity.
Nothing is more surprising, though, than the story's ending. In a weird translation into comedy -- with some brilliant commentary on the publishing world -- the novel suddenly wraps everything up neatly. Of course, Reta notices this tidy denouement, too. After all, throughout the story she's one step ahead of us: "Novelists," she admits, "are always being accused of indulging in the artifice of coincidence."
Since we first met her, Reta's taunts have trained us to be skeptical of all such artifice, but, come on, Shields suggests with a wink, everybody needs to rest sooner or later. And ultimately, what other indulgence can we enjoy more than the wonderful coincidence of being alive together? This is one of those books that make you regret that reading is a solitary pleasure.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0509/p1...
November 8, 2017
I am tempted to write, "this was a beautifully written load of old cobblers" and leave it at that, but that statement probably deserves to be elaborated on.
I didn't start out hating on this novel, it incrementally built up, misdeed upon misdeed.
I can't work out if Shields is basically thumbing her nose at any critic that has suggested woman's writing is too small, too focused on the domestic, not concerned with the larger crisis of 'man'. In Unless Shields seems to be purposely playing to those criticisms. There is a lengthy love letter to silk scarf shopping, a discourse on the satisfactions to be found in housework, awkward judgements on appearance (oh, the poor "chunky daughter") and a kind of Vogue Living-esque passage about what constitutes a room and the importance of fragrant woods and perfectly faded kilim rugs. This is all set against what is nominally a story about a daughters flight into vagrancy and her inexplicable search for "GOODNESS".
It actually ends up being very little about Norah's actions but rather it seems like Shields has used this as a motif upon which to theorise about powerlessness and the plight of modern woman. I find this an unforgivable abuse of a minor character. I was desperate to hear more from Norah herself or her sisters, her boyfriend ... anyone but the melancholy hand-wringing of her mother Reta. The explanation of Norahs behaviour when it does finally come, is so puzzling to me that I audibly muttered "no, no, no" when I read it. It is all rather casually dealt with in a few pages like an afterthought. Poor Norah.
So, if this is not really about family disfunction or vagrancy, what is it about ? It seems to me to be most concerned with writing itself and specifically the struggles of woman writers to be taken seriously. I wish this could have been done without these large sections from Reta’s novels A Thyme in Bloom and My Thyme is Up both of which I would award a Good Reads rating of 1 star if I could, purely for the passages about Andy and his thrusting thrombone. Was all this meant to be ironic ?, a writer with feminist sensibilities writing what seems like escapist soft romantic fiction. Is it a parody of the kind of books woman are suppose to like and woman writers are expected to write ?. I just plain gave up trying to dissect all layers of potential meaning.
Some books I dislike due to the writing style, others, as in this case are beautifully written but just fail to resonate. Despite finding this all fairly dire I am still interested in reading Shields's Pulitzer prize winner novel The Stone Dairies as I think this novel just struck me at all the wrong angles.
I didn't start out hating on this novel, it incrementally built up, misdeed upon misdeed.
I can't work out if Shields is basically thumbing her nose at any critic that has suggested woman's writing is too small, too focused on the domestic, not concerned with the larger crisis of 'man'. In Unless Shields seems to be purposely playing to those criticisms. There is a lengthy love letter to silk scarf shopping, a discourse on the satisfactions to be found in housework, awkward judgements on appearance (oh, the poor "chunky daughter") and a kind of Vogue Living-esque passage about what constitutes a room and the importance of fragrant woods and perfectly faded kilim rugs. This is all set against what is nominally a story about a daughters flight into vagrancy and her inexplicable search for "GOODNESS".
It actually ends up being very little about Norah's actions but rather it seems like Shields has used this as a motif upon which to theorise about powerlessness and the plight of modern woman. I find this an unforgivable abuse of a minor character. I was desperate to hear more from Norah herself or her sisters, her boyfriend ... anyone but the melancholy hand-wringing of her mother Reta. The explanation of Norahs behaviour when it does finally come, is so puzzling to me that I audibly muttered "no, no, no" when I read it. It is all rather casually dealt with in a few pages like an afterthought. Poor Norah.
So, if this is not really about family disfunction or vagrancy, what is it about ? It seems to me to be most concerned with writing itself and specifically the struggles of woman writers to be taken seriously. I wish this could have been done without these large sections from Reta’s novels A Thyme in Bloom and My Thyme is Up both of which I would award a Good Reads rating of 1 star if I could, purely for the passages about Andy and his thrusting thrombone. Was all this meant to be ironic ?, a writer with feminist sensibilities writing what seems like escapist soft romantic fiction. Is it a parody of the kind of books woman are suppose to like and woman writers are expected to write ?. I just plain gave up trying to dissect all layers of potential meaning.
Some books I dislike due to the writing style, others, as in this case are beautifully written but just fail to resonate. Despite finding this all fairly dire I am still interested in reading Shields's Pulitzer prize winner novel The Stone Dairies as I think this novel just struck me at all the wrong angles.
December 2, 2021
“Norah had dropped out of university, she had parted from her boyfriend, she was pursuing a path to spiritual goodness, which the family couldn’t quite understand, she was detaching herself from the rest of us, sleeping in a hostel, and yes, begging money at the corner of Bathurst and Bloor in downtown Toronto – but everyone held out hopes that she would return to being the Norah we knew and loved.”
Protagonist Reta Winters is a translator and novelist with three teenage daughters. She is in a happy long-term relationship with the father of her children, though they never married. She has written one novel and started a sequel. Life has been going well for Reta when her eldest daughter, Norah, suddenly and significantly changes her behavior. She starts sitting near a busy intersection in Toronto, holding up a sign that reads “Goodness.” We follow Reta’s inner dialogue as she tries to figure out what has happened to derail her daughter’s life. As Reta puts it:
“I am going through some bleak days…. I, too, am hungry for the comfort of the ‘entire universe,’ but I don’t know how to assemble it and neither does [Norah]. I sense something incomplete about the whole arrangement, like a bronze casting that’s split open in the foundry, an artifact destined by some invisible flaw to break apart.”
This book is quiet but poignant. It is filled with beautifully crafted prose. Shields drives the narrative forward through Reta’s inner dialogue, as she tries to make sense of what has happened, while also carrying out the routines of daily living and writing her novel. The interactions of the characters provide an insightful look at the process of publishing, writing, translating, and editing. These scenes are often witty and humorous. By the end, I felt I knew Reta and would love to spend time with her.
Sometimes an author comes along that feels like she is speaking directly to me. Carol Shields is such an author. I plan to read all of her work. I simply love her writing and this book will be in my top ten books of the year.
Protagonist Reta Winters is a translator and novelist with three teenage daughters. She is in a happy long-term relationship with the father of her children, though they never married. She has written one novel and started a sequel. Life has been going well for Reta when her eldest daughter, Norah, suddenly and significantly changes her behavior. She starts sitting near a busy intersection in Toronto, holding up a sign that reads “Goodness.” We follow Reta’s inner dialogue as she tries to figure out what has happened to derail her daughter’s life. As Reta puts it:
“I am going through some bleak days…. I, too, am hungry for the comfort of the ‘entire universe,’ but I don’t know how to assemble it and neither does [Norah]. I sense something incomplete about the whole arrangement, like a bronze casting that’s split open in the foundry, an artifact destined by some invisible flaw to break apart.”
This book is quiet but poignant. It is filled with beautifully crafted prose. Shields drives the narrative forward through Reta’s inner dialogue, as she tries to make sense of what has happened, while also carrying out the routines of daily living and writing her novel. The interactions of the characters provide an insightful look at the process of publishing, writing, translating, and editing. These scenes are often witty and humorous. By the end, I felt I knew Reta and would love to spend time with her.
Sometimes an author comes along that feels like she is speaking directly to me. Carol Shields is such an author. I plan to read all of her work. I simply love her writing and this book will be in my top ten books of the year.
February 12, 2020
It is said that most writers have only one story to tell and, if they write more than one book, they essentially find lots of different ways of telling or exploring that story. After reading, in fairly quick succession, three of Carol Shields's books (The Stone Diaries, The Box Garden, and this book), I wonder if her story is about a search for genuine internal kindness and compassion—as opposed to the stuff we feign or aspire to, knowing that we secretly have the opposite feelings.
But to reduce Shields's work to that one theme seems unfair. She writes with such muscle, weaving a concern for philosophical and sociological issues into her stories.
In Unless, a writer named Reta Winters grapples with a woman's place in literature and in life as she agonizes over her eldest daughter's retreat from family and participation in life by becoming a mute beggar wearing a cardboard sign on her chest, "a single word printed in black marker—GOODNESS," as she sits on a street corner in Toronto.
How does Shields manage coherence? Somehow she intertwines palpable warmth in her descriptions of family, marriage, and home; along with long passages about women's invisibility or miniaturization in literature; along with her protagonist Reta Winters's notes about the light fiction she is writing (talk about images within images: writer Carol Shields writes a writer who is writing a writer who is writing!); along with a mother's understanding of her daughter's pain and her own desperation for the well-being of all three of her children. Shields pulls off what could, in less muscular hands, become a tedious weave. Not only was I intrigued as a reader, but as a writer I was inspired.
But to reduce Shields's work to that one theme seems unfair. She writes with such muscle, weaving a concern for philosophical and sociological issues into her stories.
In Unless, a writer named Reta Winters grapples with a woman's place in literature and in life as she agonizes over her eldest daughter's retreat from family and participation in life by becoming a mute beggar wearing a cardboard sign on her chest, "a single word printed in black marker—GOODNESS," as she sits on a street corner in Toronto.
How does Shields manage coherence? Somehow she intertwines palpable warmth in her descriptions of family, marriage, and home; along with long passages about women's invisibility or miniaturization in literature; along with her protagonist Reta Winters's notes about the light fiction she is writing (talk about images within images: writer Carol Shields writes a writer who is writing a writer who is writing!); along with a mother's understanding of her daughter's pain and her own desperation for the well-being of all three of her children. Shields pulls off what could, in less muscular hands, become a tedious weave. Not only was I intrigued as a reader, but as a writer I was inspired.
July 13, 2008
This is my favorite Carol Shields book so far, and that is saying a lot because I adore Carol Shields. This novel was short-listed for the Booker. There is so much here, but it is portrayed in the classic slow, sensitive, Shieldsian manner. Those who think there is "nothing going on here" or that it's "too slow" or "boring" are most certainly missing a great deal. This novel invites a second or third read as well.
Read
May 12, 2025# Mothering May
DNF @40%
Um soutien a secar ao vento do Mediterrâneo é praticamente a bandeira nacional italiana. A bandeira francesa. A bandeira portuguesa.
Tinha muita curiosidade com Carol Shields, uma escritora tão conceituada no seu país adoptivo, o Canadá, que até tem um prémio com o seu nome, e este livro sobre a ansiedade de uma mãe cuja filha abandona o namorado e a faculdade para se instalar numa esquina com um cartaz a dizer “bondade”, pareceu-me perfeito para a temática da maternidade do mês de Maio.
Gostei da protagonista, escritora e tradutora, que explica que a “felicidade é a chapa de vidro que transportamos mentalmente”, intrigou-me o facto de todos os capítulos (tal como o próprio livro) terem como títulos os conectores que usamos para ligar as frases entre si: contudo, a fim de, por isso, não obstante, uma vez, etc., e detectei alguns indícios de crítica ao patriarcado no discurso de Reta, que me levaram a investigar a posição da autora. Carol Shields é considerada uma “feminista branda” e eu, apesar de desconfiar de todos os adjectivos que são colados ao feminismo, estava disposta a ver como se manifestaria esta afabilidade. A questão é que mais do que feminista, o estilo de Shields é hiperfeminino e, tal como dispenso cenas de desporto e carros em livros escritos por homens, impacientam-me episódios como a descrição das comidas e bebidas num lanche de amigas ou várias páginas da protagonista a comprar o lenço ideal para oferecer. Não é um mau livro, mas não sou eu a destinatária.
DNF @40%
Um soutien a secar ao vento do Mediterrâneo é praticamente a bandeira nacional italiana. A bandeira francesa. A bandeira portuguesa.
Tinha muita curiosidade com Carol Shields, uma escritora tão conceituada no seu país adoptivo, o Canadá, que até tem um prémio com o seu nome, e este livro sobre a ansiedade de uma mãe cuja filha abandona o namorado e a faculdade para se instalar numa esquina com um cartaz a dizer “bondade”, pareceu-me perfeito para a temática da maternidade do mês de Maio.
Gostei da protagonista, escritora e tradutora, que explica que a “felicidade é a chapa de vidro que transportamos mentalmente”, intrigou-me o facto de todos os capítulos (tal como o próprio livro) terem como títulos os conectores que usamos para ligar as frases entre si: contudo, a fim de, por isso, não obstante, uma vez, etc., e detectei alguns indícios de crítica ao patriarcado no discurso de Reta, que me levaram a investigar a posição da autora. Carol Shields é considerada uma “feminista branda” e eu, apesar de desconfiar de todos os adjectivos que são colados ao feminismo, estava disposta a ver como se manifestaria esta afabilidade. A questão é que mais do que feminista, o estilo de Shields é hiperfeminino e, tal como dispenso cenas de desporto e carros em livros escritos por homens, impacientam-me episódios como a descrição das comidas e bebidas num lanche de amigas ou várias páginas da protagonista a comprar o lenço ideal para oferecer. Não é um mau livro, mas não sou eu a destinatária.
June 23, 2016
A perfectly normal, healthy and congenial nineteen-year-old young woman who grew up in a closely-knit and nurturing well-to-do family suddenly quits university, her family and her boyfriend to panhandle in a street corner of downtown Toronto.
The novel is the youngster’s mother’s account of her experiences in dealing with the shocking loss of her lovely eldest daughter. She makes a desperate attempt to come up with possible reasons for her derelict daughter’s inconceivable action. Being a translator (from French to English) of memoirs written by a renowned French feminist, who has long influenced her worldview about gender inequality, she develops a bent towards the theory that her daughter’s action is an expression of her powerlessness in face of the world’s entrenched prejudices towards women; her only defense is withdrawal from life altogether. Interviewing her daughter’s boyfriend and university professor doesn’t provide any rational clues. Her desolation drives her to write imaginary letters lashing out at those writers whom she considers as sexist bigots. Meanwhile, she struggles, along with her husband and the other two daughters, to continue living life as normal as she can manage, being aware all the while though of the big hole left in the fabric of the household.
The denouement comes as quite disturbing but not too much of a surprise. In these modern times, we all know how a traumatic event could exert damaging mental stress on an otherwise perfectly normal person. But the reader is left to wonder if the immediate tangible cause (a traumatic event) is the only cause that fully explains the youngster’s abrupt self-abnegation. Could there be an ultimate cause too? Could the mother’s maternal instinct be correct – that the intangible cause is the incremental build-up in the girl’s young mind of innate fear and powerlessness evoked by what she perceives as a male-dominant universe in which she would never achieve greatness?
What's so haunting about this novel is the realization that not even parents' sacrificial love can shield their vulnerable young girls from some of the world's harshest realities.
October 11, 2011
The 1001 books list is great for introducing you to authors that you were not previously familiar with. It's like a little black book literary dating service and without shame or embarrassment it will lead you by the clammy hand to meet a new author without you feeling half-witted, socially inept and geeky for making the effort or for not having made the effort earlier.
Here Shovelmonkey1, it says, meet some new authors. Put your eyes between their pages and let their words roam around in your head. Then, if it does get awkward and you want to do a runner, I won't judge you. But you know you'll judge yourself, right?
So, the 1001 books list introduced me to Carol Shields via Unless, her last and apparently most popular work (big thumbs up from many literary gurus and a teeny tiny mountain of award nominations). Well thanks for the intro 1001 books list, but this one kind of bombed for me. It was the literary blind date I had to run away from.
I approached this book with no preconceptions about what the story might be and then immediately failed to engage with it. I didn't empathise with the character Reta Winters. I just didn't really care about Reta, her novel, her husband, her nice house or her wayward daughter. I was actually a bit interested in the ideas behind Norah and her pursuit of "goodness" but that never got expanded upon sufficiently for my liking which was shame because it was the most interesting part of the book.
Maybe this is a book that only speaks to a certain group of people and perhaps one day when I have wayward children of my own and am a parent, worried out of my head over the inexplicable eccentricities of my beloved children, then perhaps I'll pick up this book again and think "right, so that's what this is all about".
Here Shovelmonkey1, it says, meet some new authors. Put your eyes between their pages and let their words roam around in your head. Then, if it does get awkward and you want to do a runner, I won't judge you. But you know you'll judge yourself, right?
So, the 1001 books list introduced me to Carol Shields via Unless, her last and apparently most popular work (big thumbs up from many literary gurus and a teeny tiny mountain of award nominations). Well thanks for the intro 1001 books list, but this one kind of bombed for me. It was the literary blind date I had to run away from.
I approached this book with no preconceptions about what the story might be and then immediately failed to engage with it. I didn't empathise with the character Reta Winters. I just didn't really care about Reta, her novel, her husband, her nice house or her wayward daughter. I was actually a bit interested in the ideas behind Norah and her pursuit of "goodness" but that never got expanded upon sufficiently for my liking which was shame because it was the most interesting part of the book.
Maybe this is a book that only speaks to a certain group of people and perhaps one day when I have wayward children of my own and am a parent, worried out of my head over the inexplicable eccentricities of my beloved children, then perhaps I'll pick up this book again and think "right, so that's what this is all about".
January 2, 2008
I was so bored reading this book. It started out boring in the first chapter when she listed all of her works and explained her translations. I'm not one of those type of readers where a book has to immediately grip you in the beginning otherwise you quit. So I kept on reading hoping it would get better... but it didn't.
The book focuses on how Reta deals with her daugher, Norah's, strange decision to live in a shelter and to beg on the streets. Reta starts to believe the reason why Norah became this way is because of some feminist plight. So Reta rants about feminism for a good boring portion of this book and starts to write letters to random people about her daughter and feminism. The story about her daughter Norah was mildy interesting but it always felt like it was the background not the main focus. I did like how in the end, the mystery of why Norah took to begging on the streets in the name of Goodness was revealed, which tied back into an earlier small part in the book.
I felt like I did not get to know any of the characters. Reta's husband, Tom, and their daughters, Natalie & Christine, have no personalities. Their characters are completely flat. The only two people we see any kind of personality are Reta, who is neurotic, and Danielle Westerman, who is unlikeable.
The book focuses on how Reta deals with her daugher, Norah's, strange decision to live in a shelter and to beg on the streets. Reta starts to believe the reason why Norah became this way is because of some feminist plight. So Reta rants about feminism for a good boring portion of this book and starts to write letters to random people about her daughter and feminism. The story about her daughter Norah was mildy interesting but it always felt like it was the background not the main focus. I did like how in the end, the mystery of why Norah took to begging on the streets in the name of Goodness was revealed, which tied back into an earlier small part in the book.
I felt like I did not get to know any of the characters. Reta's husband, Tom, and their daughters, Natalie & Christine, have no personalities. Their characters are completely flat. The only two people we see any kind of personality are Reta, who is neurotic, and Danielle Westerman, who is unlikeable.
May 8, 2015
I waited patiently for this book to come out in softback so that I could read the final novel by Carol Shields. It just so happened that it came out right around my wedding and so the book gathered dust on my nightstand as I was a little busy and preoccupied with wedding planning. So I packed it and took it with me on my honeymoon. I remember pulling it out of my book bag, slathering on some sunscreen and settling myself onto a raft in the pool.
I finished the book in about two days with a wicked sunburn. But what I remember the most was crying under my sunhat and sunglasses and glancing up to see that there was a row of readers seated at the edge of the pool. 10 people of various ages, all voraciously reading... Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. And then I noticed one of their numbers, an older woman with soft grey curls was reading Unless like me. When our eyes met, we both noticed that the other was crying. A knowing smile passed between us.
Reta Winter's reevaluation of her own happiness, which, as in most of Shield's novels, works as a metaphor for the internal struggle and external struggle that each woman and women, respectively, have been going through since the soldiers came home from WWII and we all had to decide what we wanted to do and be with our lives--what would make us happy--is at the heart of this novel. This is an incredibly introspective story, it will either work for you or it won't. For me, I'm not sure if it was the story, or the knowing that this would be the last novel I would read, for the first time, from the voice of Carol Shield, that made me weep more.
I finished the book in about two days with a wicked sunburn. But what I remember the most was crying under my sunhat and sunglasses and glancing up to see that there was a row of readers seated at the edge of the pool. 10 people of various ages, all voraciously reading... Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. And then I noticed one of their numbers, an older woman with soft grey curls was reading Unless like me. When our eyes met, we both noticed that the other was crying. A knowing smile passed between us.
Reta Winter's reevaluation of her own happiness, which, as in most of Shield's novels, works as a metaphor for the internal struggle and external struggle that each woman and women, respectively, have been going through since the soldiers came home from WWII and we all had to decide what we wanted to do and be with our lives--what would make us happy--is at the heart of this novel. This is an incredibly introspective story, it will either work for you or it won't. For me, I'm not sure if it was the story, or the knowing that this would be the last novel I would read, for the first time, from the voice of Carol Shield, that made me weep more.
December 24, 2010
A woman writer working on her second novel. Then suddenly, with no particular reason, her eldest daughter leaves college and her boyfriend and begs in the street of Toronto with a placard sign on her neck that reads: "GOODNESS". The daughter refuses to speak to the mother or anybody. Just like that.
Yes, the plot is just like that but the way Carol Shields (1935-2003) writes is different from what I've read so far. It is fluid, supple and multi-layered or multi-pronged. I would imagine that if this plot were given to Marilynne Robinson of Home or Roxana Robinson of Cost, they would have created a huge tearjerker. Shields is also a woman, a mother and looking at her picture she seems to be a warm person. However, despite the opportunity of activating my tear glands, she kept me in thrall throughout my reading. For a plot as simple, she interjected her life as a struggling female writer (in a predominantly male Canadian literary world), a mother who is trying to do her role to take care of her two other daughters, a wife who still has to regularly make love with her husband for 25 years despite either one of them ending up crying after each lovemaking session. That last statement, at first seems to be displaced just like how Shields used the menial activities that the mother, Reta Winters, 44 years of age, has to go through everyday. But when you slow down and pay attention you would get that feeling that the triviality of Reta's everyday lives heightens the message that the book wants to convey: that for parents, regardless on how good we think our parenting skills are, will never have the guarantee that our children will be want we want them to be. That parenting is a hit-miss and there was nothing that prepared us to that role.
The book does not preach how to be a good parent. In fact, while reading, I was murmuring to myself as if talking to Reta: It is your writing. You are too busy, you don't have time for your kids. Only to be proven wrong in the last chapter when the reason is revealed. Lesson: in my opinion, good writers can never be double-guessed by their readers.
This book was published in 2002 and was shortlisted in the 2003 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. On that same year, Shields died from breast cancer. There is a part in the book that seems to describe the non-cancer situation using CA terminologies. It's kinda creepy, I would like to share it with you:
Saludos, Shields!
Yes, the plot is just like that but the way Carol Shields (1935-2003) writes is different from what I've read so far. It is fluid, supple and multi-layered or multi-pronged. I would imagine that if this plot were given to Marilynne Robinson of Home or Roxana Robinson of Cost, they would have created a huge tearjerker. Shields is also a woman, a mother and looking at her picture she seems to be a warm person. However, despite the opportunity of activating my tear glands, she kept me in thrall throughout my reading. For a plot as simple, she interjected her life as a struggling female writer (in a predominantly male Canadian literary world), a mother who is trying to do her role to take care of her two other daughters, a wife who still has to regularly make love with her husband for 25 years despite either one of them ending up crying after each lovemaking session. That last statement, at first seems to be displaced just like how Shields used the menial activities that the mother, Reta Winters, 44 years of age, has to go through everyday. But when you slow down and pay attention you would get that feeling that the triviality of Reta's everyday lives heightens the message that the book wants to convey: that for parents, regardless on how good we think our parenting skills are, will never have the guarantee that our children will be want we want them to be. That parenting is a hit-miss and there was nothing that prepared us to that role.
The book does not preach how to be a good parent. In fact, while reading, I was murmuring to myself as if talking to Reta: It is your writing. You are too busy, you don't have time for your kids. Only to be proven wrong in the last chapter when the reason is revealed. Lesson: in my opinion, good writers can never be double-guessed by their readers.
This book was published in 2002 and was shortlisted in the 2003 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. On that same year, Shields died from breast cancer. There is a part in the book that seems to describe the non-cancer situation using CA terminologies. It's kinda creepy, I would like to share it with you:
"Norah seems lodged in childhood's last irresponsible days, stung by the tang of injustice, nineteen years old, with something violent and needful beating her brain. It's like a soft tumour, but exceptionally aggressive. Its tentacles have entered all the quadrants of her consciousness. This invasion happened fast, when no one was looking."A few years back, my loving aunt died of breast cancer so I wonder how a CA patient can still write a beautiful beautiful book while suffering from it.
Saludos, Shields!
September 15, 2022
I love how well and fully drawn our protagonist and narrator is. Reta Winters is terrific to spend time with. Beautifully written, meditative, and very moving.
I am sorry we have lost Shields’ voice.
See my blog for a full review.
I am sorry we have lost Shields’ voice.
See my blog for a full review.
October 8, 2017
"Unless is the worry word of the English language. It flies like a moth around the ear, you hardly hear it, and yet everything depends on its breathy presence. (...) Unless provides you with a trapdoor, a tunnel into light, the reverse side of not enough. Unless keeps you from drowning in the presiding arrangements."
Reta (not Rita - Shields obviously read Derrida) Winters is 44, works as a translator and writer, is married to a doctor, has three daughters and a golden retriever named Pet, and lives in a beautiful house in Orangetown, Ontario. When her eldest daughter, 19-year-old Norah, drops out of college and starts to beg on a Toronto street corner, sitting behind a cardboard sign reading "goodness", Reta starts questioning her life: Is it really as idyllic as she thought, or did she simply not confront some lesser aspects of it? "I am supposed to be Reta Winters, that sunny woman, but something happened when her back was turned." In Reta's opinion, Norah consciously chose her new life of passivity because she realized that as a woman, she will not be granted the same opportunities as men, and she will not be able to fully experience the world.
It is remarkable how this set-up objectifies Norah: Her intentions are ascribed to her by her mother, she herself does not explain them (the truth only becomes clear at the end of the book, which to me was rather surprising, but well thought out). To some degree, Norah becomes a projection surface for her mother's feelings about gender inequlity, and, by that, also a victim of it. The sign saying "goodness" leads Reta to the interpretation that her daughter has committed herself to seeking goodness - which seemed odd to me, because a) as a beggar, she is asking for other people's goodness, and b) no one will increase the level of goodness in the world by sitting on a street corner.
Don't get me wrong: Misogyny exists, the glass ceiling exists, the standards for men and women are still different, and we have to fight it, "we" being women AND men, because the consequences would be good for everybody - it's not as if men weren't also trapped in toxic behavioral patterns. I am just not sure whether Carol Shields does a good job capturing the problem.
I have to admit that it certainly played a role that I simply did not like Reta, her passivity made me angry - and she was not in a position in which taking action would have been connected to possible negative consequences. Why does she treat her mentor Danielle Westermann like a mother-figure and belittles herself by never contradicting or challenging her? Why doesn't she simply ask her mother-in-law what it is that makes her so sad? Why doesn't she confront her almost grown-up daughters with the fact that they sometimes make her feel invisible and taken for granted?
Why does she write letters and does not send them? In case she just writes them to order her thoughts, why does she indulge in blaming those she adresses of not acknowledging the contribution of women to literature? I do agree with Reta that being a WASP is still very beneficial when you're a writer, but writing down this unoriginal observation in letters you do not even intend to send will most certainly not help the situation. It will and does put her down further, as it is nothing but a kind of rumination, re-assuring her of her own passivity. I am not a psychologist, but it seems to me that Reta is generally very busy demonstrating to what degree she internalized her learnt helplessness, a path that takes people straight to a final destination called depression - and instead of facing her own depression, Reta projects it onto her daughter Norah, because she is hardly able to feel herself.
Another aspect of the book that bothered me were the crude, in-your-face metaphors: Reta Summers becomes Reta Winters by quasi-marrying Tom (they are not really married so they can fool themselves that they are super-sixties-alternative - *yawn*), a friend gets her navel surgically removed because a man wants her to (you got to be kidding me), Reta's editor keeps interrupting her when she wants to explain her ideas for her novel, Reta tries to re-establish order in her life by cleaning her house, her quasi-husband Tom - who is a nice guy, but as a man seems also to represent the ancient male-dominated order - is a specialist for trilobites, oh yeah, and of course there's shopping for colorful accessories. Wait - are these still metaphors or is this just proof that Shields thinks her readers are not particularly smart, so she spares them the subtlety that, by the way, is unfortunately a typical power tool of misogyny?
In other parts, the levels of language are so twisted that it becomes impossible to deconstruct any meaning (for me at least): "The sentiment (of inequality) is excessive, blowsy, loose, womanish. But I am willing to blurt it all out, if only to myself." The language is as wrapped up in itself as Reta is, which is incredibly frustrating. What is Reta saying here? I am angry about inequality, so I am not going to do anything about it except letting my inner voice bitterly mimick the derogative perspective of misogynysts by calling my feelings "womanish". You do you, Reta, but this is nonsense. Why am I reading this?
This strange loop is also mirrored in the book Reta writes, a sequel to some light romance where a woman loves cats and makes rice casseroles because she is a woman or something along those lines (yes, I am losing patience with our good Reta, and I am not only verbalizing it to myself, folks).
And one last point: A writer does a major disservice to feminism when she writes sentences like "I've had about two. Two conversations with men who weren't dying to 'win' the conversation." This is simply absurd. Absurd!
At least this book offers a lot of material for discussion, so check out the Mookse & the Gripes Booker 2002 discussion thread!
Reta (not Rita - Shields obviously read Derrida) Winters is 44, works as a translator and writer, is married to a doctor, has three daughters and a golden retriever named Pet, and lives in a beautiful house in Orangetown, Ontario. When her eldest daughter, 19-year-old Norah, drops out of college and starts to beg on a Toronto street corner, sitting behind a cardboard sign reading "goodness", Reta starts questioning her life: Is it really as idyllic as she thought, or did she simply not confront some lesser aspects of it? "I am supposed to be Reta Winters, that sunny woman, but something happened when her back was turned." In Reta's opinion, Norah consciously chose her new life of passivity because she realized that as a woman, she will not be granted the same opportunities as men, and she will not be able to fully experience the world.
It is remarkable how this set-up objectifies Norah: Her intentions are ascribed to her by her mother, she herself does not explain them (the truth only becomes clear at the end of the book, which to me was rather surprising, but well thought out). To some degree, Norah becomes a projection surface for her mother's feelings about gender inequlity, and, by that, also a victim of it. The sign saying "goodness" leads Reta to the interpretation that her daughter has committed herself to seeking goodness - which seemed odd to me, because a) as a beggar, she is asking for other people's goodness, and b) no one will increase the level of goodness in the world by sitting on a street corner.
Don't get me wrong: Misogyny exists, the glass ceiling exists, the standards for men and women are still different, and we have to fight it, "we" being women AND men, because the consequences would be good for everybody - it's not as if men weren't also trapped in toxic behavioral patterns. I am just not sure whether Carol Shields does a good job capturing the problem.
I have to admit that it certainly played a role that I simply did not like Reta, her passivity made me angry - and she was not in a position in which taking action would have been connected to possible negative consequences. Why does she treat her mentor Danielle Westermann like a mother-figure and belittles herself by never contradicting or challenging her? Why doesn't she simply ask her mother-in-law what it is that makes her so sad? Why doesn't she confront her almost grown-up daughters with the fact that they sometimes make her feel invisible and taken for granted?
Why does she write letters and does not send them? In case she just writes them to order her thoughts, why does she indulge in blaming those she adresses of not acknowledging the contribution of women to literature? I do agree with Reta that being a WASP is still very beneficial when you're a writer, but writing down this unoriginal observation in letters you do not even intend to send will most certainly not help the situation. It will and does put her down further, as it is nothing but a kind of rumination, re-assuring her of her own passivity. I am not a psychologist, but it seems to me that Reta is generally very busy demonstrating to what degree she internalized her learnt helplessness, a path that takes people straight to a final destination called depression - and instead of facing her own depression, Reta projects it onto her daughter Norah, because she is hardly able to feel herself.
Another aspect of the book that bothered me were the crude, in-your-face metaphors: Reta Summers becomes Reta Winters by quasi-marrying Tom (they are not really married so they can fool themselves that they are super-sixties-alternative - *yawn*), a friend gets her navel surgically removed because a man wants her to (you got to be kidding me), Reta's editor keeps interrupting her when she wants to explain her ideas for her novel, Reta tries to re-establish order in her life by cleaning her house, her quasi-husband Tom - who is a nice guy, but as a man seems also to represent the ancient male-dominated order - is a specialist for trilobites, oh yeah, and of course there's shopping for colorful accessories. Wait - are these still metaphors or is this just proof that Shields thinks her readers are not particularly smart, so she spares them the subtlety that, by the way, is unfortunately a typical power tool of misogyny?
In other parts, the levels of language are so twisted that it becomes impossible to deconstruct any meaning (for me at least): "The sentiment (of inequality) is excessive, blowsy, loose, womanish. But I am willing to blurt it all out, if only to myself." The language is as wrapped up in itself as Reta is, which is incredibly frustrating. What is Reta saying here? I am angry about inequality, so I am not going to do anything about it except letting my inner voice bitterly mimick the derogative perspective of misogynysts by calling my feelings "womanish". You do you, Reta, but this is nonsense. Why am I reading this?
This strange loop is also mirrored in the book Reta writes, a sequel to some light romance where a woman loves cats and makes rice casseroles because she is a woman or something along those lines (yes, I am losing patience with our good Reta, and I am not only verbalizing it to myself, folks).
And one last point: A writer does a major disservice to feminism when she writes sentences like "I've had about two. Two conversations with men who weren't dying to 'win' the conversation." This is simply absurd. Absurd!
At least this book offers a lot of material for discussion, so check out the Mookse & the Gripes Booker 2002 discussion thread!
August 24, 2021
Başarılı bir çevirmen ve yazar olan Reta Winters üç çocuğu ve eşiyle birlikte mutlu bir hayat sürmektedir. Fakat büyük kızı Norah üniversiteyi bırakıp kendisini iyiliğe adamasının ardından hikaye bambaşka bir boyut kazanıyor. Sıradan görünen bir hikayenin altında kadınların erkeklerle aynı görünürlükte olup seslerini duyurabilme mücadelesine dair feminist bir metin sunuyor. Yazarın dilini ve anlatımını da çok sevdim. Tavsiyedir.
September 6, 2017
Digital audiobook narrated by Joan Allen
Reta Williams is a successful author and translator, a wife, and a mother to three teenage daughters. Her oldest daughter, Norah, is a 19-year-old freshman at university, when Reta and her doctor husband, Tom, discover that Norah has apparently dropped out, and spends her days sitting on a Toronto street corner, with a signed around her neck that reads simply “Goodness.” The mystery of how and why her daughter has come to panhandling in this way is the major plot point of the novel.
However, this really isn’t a plot-driven story. It’s a character study: of what it means to be a woman, a mother, a writer, a feminist. Reta is worried sick about Norah, but she is still a wife, still meets friends for lunch, does laundry, buys gifts, works on her latest book, and she writes letters (which she doesn’t send) in response to articles she reads. Yet, while Reta continues to lead her life, she cannot stop thinking and worrying about Norah.
I finished this book nearly two weeks ago, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I simply didn’t have the words to describe how I felt about it. The best way is to quote from the novel itself:
“A life is full of isolated events, but these events, if they are to form a coherent narrative, require odd pieces of language to cement them together, little chips of grammar (mostly adverbs or prepositions) that are hard to define, since they are abstractions of location or relative position, works like therefore, else, other, also, thereof, theretofore, instead, otherwise, despite, already, and not yet.
....Unless, with its elegiac undertones, is a term used in logic, a word breathed by the hopeful or by writers of fiction wanting to prise open the crusted world and reveal another plane of being, which is similar in its geographical particulars and peopled by those who resemble ourselves.”
This is the last book that Shields wrote, though it is the first by her that I’ve read. I cannot help but wonder how much of Reta’s internal dialogue was really Shields’. (The author died of breast cancer within a year after the novel was published.)
Joan Allen performs the audiobook. She is a gifted actress, and is perfect for this work. She made Shields’ prose virtually sing.
Reta Williams is a successful author and translator, a wife, and a mother to three teenage daughters. Her oldest daughter, Norah, is a 19-year-old freshman at university, when Reta and her doctor husband, Tom, discover that Norah has apparently dropped out, and spends her days sitting on a Toronto street corner, with a signed around her neck that reads simply “Goodness.” The mystery of how and why her daughter has come to panhandling in this way is the major plot point of the novel.
However, this really isn’t a plot-driven story. It’s a character study: of what it means to be a woman, a mother, a writer, a feminist. Reta is worried sick about Norah, but she is still a wife, still meets friends for lunch, does laundry, buys gifts, works on her latest book, and she writes letters (which she doesn’t send) in response to articles she reads. Yet, while Reta continues to lead her life, she cannot stop thinking and worrying about Norah.
I finished this book nearly two weeks ago, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I simply didn’t have the words to describe how I felt about it. The best way is to quote from the novel itself:
“A life is full of isolated events, but these events, if they are to form a coherent narrative, require odd pieces of language to cement them together, little chips of grammar (mostly adverbs or prepositions) that are hard to define, since they are abstractions of location or relative position, works like therefore, else, other, also, thereof, theretofore, instead, otherwise, despite, already, and not yet.
....Unless, with its elegiac undertones, is a term used in logic, a word breathed by the hopeful or by writers of fiction wanting to prise open the crusted world and reveal another plane of being, which is similar in its geographical particulars and peopled by those who resemble ourselves.”
This is the last book that Shields wrote, though it is the first by her that I’ve read. I cannot help but wonder how much of Reta’s internal dialogue was really Shields’. (The author died of breast cancer within a year after the novel was published.)
Joan Allen performs the audiobook. She is a gifted actress, and is perfect for this work. She made Shields’ prose virtually sing.
December 30, 2008
"Unless" is the last book Shields wrote before she succumbed to cancer. Written in true literary style, the book chronicles the life of a novelist/translator as she copes with the withdrawal of her daughter from college to a mute sitting on a street corner with a sign which simply reads "Goodness". All phases and forms of woman as creator of life, words, information, and emotion; as mother, daughter, sister, friend; as intellectual and emoter; and as feminist, femme, activist, accommodator and perserver of life, family, society play roles in this novel. The writing is smooth yet jarring in places.
For me, I again find I am not a fan of the literary novel except in terms of the beauty of language. Too often I have found the subject of these novels to depict a way of life of which I will never take part and therefore have difficulty in reading. This lifestyle is one which is unobtainable in my space. It is interesting that when written in historical settings, such as those of Austen and Alcott, I can enjoy and comprehend the metaphorical and conceptual images. Such behaviors in modern times actually results in nothing but negative emotions.
Is there such a thing as a literary novel which embraces those of us who are not part of mainstream middle America?
For me, I again find I am not a fan of the literary novel except in terms of the beauty of language. Too often I have found the subject of these novels to depict a way of life of which I will never take part and therefore have difficulty in reading. This lifestyle is one which is unobtainable in my space. It is interesting that when written in historical settings, such as those of Austen and Alcott, I can enjoy and comprehend the metaphorical and conceptual images. Such behaviors in modern times actually results in nothing but negative emotions.
Is there such a thing as a literary novel which embraces those of us who are not part of mainstream middle America?
November 24, 2008
I was initially offended by the description of Sheilds as a "gentle feminist." This double-edged sword of a description seemed an attempt at making a dirty word like "feminist" more palatable to the general public. The feminist in me roared, "Why must a woman still be described as 'gentle'?!"
Upon reflection, though, I have realized that Sheilds truly is a gentle feminist, in the best way possible. While the ultimate quest in this story is the protagonist's daughter's quest for goodness, there is an underlying message that truly is that of the gentle feminist. Sheilds does not proclaim "I am woman: hear me roar" but rather "I am woman: HEAR ME."
Sheilds fights to be heard in the world of literature, which has traditionally excluded women's voices when they say things that men do not want to hear.
Upon reflection, though, I have realized that Sheilds truly is a gentle feminist, in the best way possible. While the ultimate quest in this story is the protagonist's daughter's quest for goodness, there is an underlying message that truly is that of the gentle feminist. Sheilds does not proclaim "I am woman: hear me roar" but rather "I am woman: HEAR ME."
Sheilds fights to be heard in the world of literature, which has traditionally excluded women's voices when they say things that men do not want to hear.
April 7, 2019
"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."
- George Eliot
UNLESS by Carol Shields is the book chosen for our Book Club to discuss the first week of April. Although I have heard of American-born, Canadian novelist Carol Shields, this is the first and only book by her that I have read. UNLESS is the last novel she wrote.
"UNLESS is the worry word of the English language. It flies like a moth around the ear, you hardly hear it, and yet everything depends on its breathy presence. Unless - that's the little subjunctive mineral you carry along in your pocket crease. It's always there, or else not there.(If you add a capital s to unless, you get Sunless, or Sand Soleil, a very odd Chris Marker film.)
Unless you're lucky, unless you're healthy, fertile, unless you're loved and fed, unless you're clear about your sexual direction, unless you're offered what others are offered, you go down in the darkness, down to despair. Unless provides you with a trapdoor, a tunnel into the light, the reverse side of not enough. Unless keeps you from drowning in the presiding arrangements. Ironically, unless, the lever that finally shifts reality into a new perspective, cannot be expressed in French. A moins que doesn't have quite the heft; sauf is crude. Unless is a miracle of language and perception, Danielle Westerman says in her most recent essay, "The Shadow on the Mind." It makes us anxious, makes us cunning. Cunning like the wolves that crop up in the most thrilling fairy tales. But it gives us hope."
"The conjunction and (sometimes) adverb UNLESS, with its elegiac undertones, is a term used in logic, a word breathed by the hopeful or by writers of fiction wanting to prise open the crusted world and reveal another plane of being, which is similar in geographical particulars and peopled by those who resemble ourselves."
"Reta Winters, 44 years of age, has started a new sort of life. She has discovered the meaning of loss for the first time. For all of her days, Reta Winters has enjoyed the useful monotony of happiness: a loving family, good friends, growing success as a writer of light fiction. This placid existence cracks open one fearful day when her beloved eldest daughter, Norah, drops out to sit on a gritty street corner, silent except for the sign around her neck that reads "GOODNESS." Reta's search for what drove her daughter to such a desperate statement turns into an unflinching and surprisingly funny meditation on where we find meaning and hope."
- Blurb on back cover of book
Initially I found this book slow going, but it seemed to "pick up" and before long I was deeply involved with Reta, her family, Pet, and her writing. Several years ago I stayed a few days in Orangeville, Ontario, so I enjoyed that connection with Reta's home town.
It made me smile proudly when Reta advocated for women authors and women in general as very important people that matter. I wondered about her eldest daughter, Norah, and was surprised, but satisfied, with the way the novel ended.
5 proud stars that matter ⭐️️⭐️️⭐️️⭐️️⭐️️
- George Eliot
UNLESS by Carol Shields is the book chosen for our Book Club to discuss the first week of April. Although I have heard of American-born, Canadian novelist Carol Shields, this is the first and only book by her that I have read. UNLESS is the last novel she wrote.
"UNLESS is the worry word of the English language. It flies like a moth around the ear, you hardly hear it, and yet everything depends on its breathy presence. Unless - that's the little subjunctive mineral you carry along in your pocket crease. It's always there, or else not there.(If you add a capital s to unless, you get Sunless, or Sand Soleil, a very odd Chris Marker film.)
Unless you're lucky, unless you're healthy, fertile, unless you're loved and fed, unless you're clear about your sexual direction, unless you're offered what others are offered, you go down in the darkness, down to despair. Unless provides you with a trapdoor, a tunnel into the light, the reverse side of not enough. Unless keeps you from drowning in the presiding arrangements. Ironically, unless, the lever that finally shifts reality into a new perspective, cannot be expressed in French. A moins que doesn't have quite the heft; sauf is crude. Unless is a miracle of language and perception, Danielle Westerman says in her most recent essay, "The Shadow on the Mind." It makes us anxious, makes us cunning. Cunning like the wolves that crop up in the most thrilling fairy tales. But it gives us hope."
"The conjunction and (sometimes) adverb UNLESS, with its elegiac undertones, is a term used in logic, a word breathed by the hopeful or by writers of fiction wanting to prise open the crusted world and reveal another plane of being, which is similar in geographical particulars and peopled by those who resemble ourselves."
"Reta Winters, 44 years of age, has started a new sort of life. She has discovered the meaning of loss for the first time. For all of her days, Reta Winters has enjoyed the useful monotony of happiness: a loving family, good friends, growing success as a writer of light fiction. This placid existence cracks open one fearful day when her beloved eldest daughter, Norah, drops out to sit on a gritty street corner, silent except for the sign around her neck that reads "GOODNESS." Reta's search for what drove her daughter to such a desperate statement turns into an unflinching and surprisingly funny meditation on where we find meaning and hope."
- Blurb on back cover of book
Initially I found this book slow going, but it seemed to "pick up" and before long I was deeply involved with Reta, her family, Pet, and her writing. Several years ago I stayed a few days in Orangeville, Ontario, so I enjoyed that connection with Reta's home town.
It made me smile proudly when Reta advocated for women authors and women in general as very important people that matter. I wondered about her eldest daughter, Norah, and was surprised, but satisfied, with the way the novel ended.
5 proud stars that matter ⭐️️⭐️️⭐️️⭐️️⭐️️
June 28, 2009
In a manner more eloquent than I could ever manage, this book expresses everything I feel about modern feminism and why it's still very much a necessity.
Heartbreaking. Beautiful. Consuming. These are only a small portion of words that can begin to describe Unless by Carol Shields. Reta Winters' daughter is so overwhelmed by her desire to experience every success and beauty the world has to offer, but her realization that she can never have everything as a woman is too much to bear. As a result, she shuts down: she lives her life on a street corner in Toronto, begging for money and wearing a sign that simply says "Goodness."
"Goodness not greatness." Yes, women can choose whether or not to stay home with their children or have careers. Yes, they have the potential and opportunities to become world leaders, business moguls, successful human beings. But are we completely, truly, utterly equal in that we have every opportunity for actual greatness, not just goodness, that a man does? Unless explores this question in a way that is genuine and sincere, acknowledging our feminine past as well as what still needs to be done for our future.
I cried while I read this book, and when I mulled it over afterward. I feel like it extracted my core and shook it up a bit.
Heartbreaking. Beautiful. Consuming. These are only a small portion of words that can begin to describe Unless by Carol Shields. Reta Winters' daughter is so overwhelmed by her desire to experience every success and beauty the world has to offer, but her realization that she can never have everything as a woman is too much to bear. As a result, she shuts down: she lives her life on a street corner in Toronto, begging for money and wearing a sign that simply says "Goodness."
"Goodness not greatness." Yes, women can choose whether or not to stay home with their children or have careers. Yes, they have the potential and opportunities to become world leaders, business moguls, successful human beings. But are we completely, truly, utterly equal in that we have every opportunity for actual greatness, not just goodness, that a man does? Unless explores this question in a way that is genuine and sincere, acknowledging our feminine past as well as what still needs to be done for our future.
I cried while I read this book, and when I mulled it over afterward. I feel like it extracted my core and shook it up a bit.
August 20, 2018
My first book by this author. Really enjoyed reading as it had most elements that made a book enjoyable to me, New words, attention to details, unconventional story telling, emphasis on women , to name a few.
It is the story of a 44.year old writer, her 3 daughters, her common law husband , and. a close set of friends and relatives. There are. a few literary references which I relished. The story focusses on,rather obsessed on why Norah, her kind and good 19 year old daughter leaves her
It is the story of a 44.year old writer, her 3 daughters, her common law husband , and. a close set of friends and relatives. There are. a few literary references which I relished. The story focusses on,rather obsessed on why Norah, her kind and good 19 year old daughter leaves her
October 27, 2017
I read this as part of The Mookse And The Gripes’ read through of the 2002 Man Booker Prize shortlist. As it happens, it is one of two books from that short list that I have on my book shelf (the other being the winner, The Life of Pi). This means I must have read this book 15 years ago, making this officially a re-read. However, unfortunately, I have no recollection of that first reading. This is a shame because 15 years is a long time and it would be interesting to know how both my taste in books and, maybe, books themselves have changed in that period.
One of the first things I noticed about the book was the chapter titles. The first couple piqued my interest and then I flicked through to see what was going on. We do get an explanation of sorts right near the end of the book:
"A life is full of isolated events, but these events, if they are to form a coherent narrative, require odd pieces of language to link them together, little chips of grammar (mostly adverbs or prepositions) that are hard to define [...] words like therefore, else, other, also, thereof, therefore, instead, otherwise, despite, already, and not yet."
It is these words that form the chapter titles and I didn’t understand it for a while. But, thanks to WndyJW over on the M&G discussion, I was able to see that the chapter titles are part of Shields’ attempt to show the fragmentary nature of life.
This fragmentation is key to the book. There were several points where I read something and thought "But you’ve already told us about that - why are you saying it again?". But once I had realised the stuff about fragmentation and then read a chapter that started "Tom and I still have sex—have I mentioned this?—even though our eldest daughter is living on the street, a derelict." I understood that the episodic nature of the story and the narrator living through a time of stress mean that the repetition is probably deliberate - the impression is that the narrator isn’t sure of what she has or hasn’t told us already.
What we get is a series of connected episodes from Reta Winters’ life. She is struggling to come to terms with the fact that her eldest daughter has apparently thrown her life away and now lives by begging on a street corner. At the same time, Reta is an author writing a novel - this actually makes Shields a writer writing a novel about a writer writing a novel about a writer, and the topic of writing is another dominant theme in the book. More on this in a minute.
The final key theme of the book is the struggle for women to be recognised in a man’s world. Reta writes, but never posts, several letters to people who have written books or articles that completely ignore the role women have played. She relates this to her belief that her daughter’s situation is a reaction to the way women are treated. At the very end of the book, we learn the truth behind her daughter’s actions, but I won’t spoil anything by saying what it is or whether Reta is right.
For the most part, I enjoyed reading this. There are several moments of humour - this was my favourite:
Willow is a superb cook and she has said to me a dozen times—I exaggerate, if only a little—that she reads cookbooks the way other people read novels. “But wouldn’t you be less of a bore if you read novels?” I long to say, but of course I don’t.
And the general topic of writing is interesting. I found myself fascinated by my own reaction where I was interested in Reta’s story but not in the story she was writing. There’s something Shields is saying about narrative, and possibly about our distance from the narrative, that I haven’t quite processed yet.
But there are also some painful bits. In a book that focuses on the role of women, it seems a bit petty to make your male characters so 2-dimensional and unbelievable. Or maybe I'm doing Shields a disservice and this is deliberate given her theme of women being overlooked. Reta’s husband, Tom, has a hobby and a job but little else. And don’t get me started on her editor who comes to visit her towards the end of the book! I found him an entirely unbelievable (possibly deliberately?) and ridiculous character who, I have to say, rather spoiled the book for me.
Overall, it was an uneven reading experience for me with some good writing but some parts that I simply found awkward to read.
One of the first things I noticed about the book was the chapter titles. The first couple piqued my interest and then I flicked through to see what was going on. We do get an explanation of sorts right near the end of the book:
"A life is full of isolated events, but these events, if they are to form a coherent narrative, require odd pieces of language to link them together, little chips of grammar (mostly adverbs or prepositions) that are hard to define [...] words like therefore, else, other, also, thereof, therefore, instead, otherwise, despite, already, and not yet."
It is these words that form the chapter titles and I didn’t understand it for a while. But, thanks to WndyJW over on the M&G discussion, I was able to see that the chapter titles are part of Shields’ attempt to show the fragmentary nature of life.
This fragmentation is key to the book. There were several points where I read something and thought "But you’ve already told us about that - why are you saying it again?". But once I had realised the stuff about fragmentation and then read a chapter that started "Tom and I still have sex—have I mentioned this?—even though our eldest daughter is living on the street, a derelict." I understood that the episodic nature of the story and the narrator living through a time of stress mean that the repetition is probably deliberate - the impression is that the narrator isn’t sure of what she has or hasn’t told us already.
What we get is a series of connected episodes from Reta Winters’ life. She is struggling to come to terms with the fact that her eldest daughter has apparently thrown her life away and now lives by begging on a street corner. At the same time, Reta is an author writing a novel - this actually makes Shields a writer writing a novel about a writer writing a novel about a writer, and the topic of writing is another dominant theme in the book. More on this in a minute.
The final key theme of the book is the struggle for women to be recognised in a man’s world. Reta writes, but never posts, several letters to people who have written books or articles that completely ignore the role women have played. She relates this to her belief that her daughter’s situation is a reaction to the way women are treated. At the very end of the book, we learn the truth behind her daughter’s actions, but I won’t spoil anything by saying what it is or whether Reta is right.
For the most part, I enjoyed reading this. There are several moments of humour - this was my favourite:
Willow is a superb cook and she has said to me a dozen times—I exaggerate, if only a little—that she reads cookbooks the way other people read novels. “But wouldn’t you be less of a bore if you read novels?” I long to say, but of course I don’t.
And the general topic of writing is interesting. I found myself fascinated by my own reaction where I was interested in Reta’s story but not in the story she was writing. There’s something Shields is saying about narrative, and possibly about our distance from the narrative, that I haven’t quite processed yet.
But there are also some painful bits. In a book that focuses on the role of women, it seems a bit petty to make your male characters so 2-dimensional and unbelievable. Or maybe I'm doing Shields a disservice and this is deliberate given her theme of women being overlooked. Reta’s husband, Tom, has a hobby and a job but little else. And don’t get me started on her editor who comes to visit her towards the end of the book! I found him an entirely unbelievable (possibly deliberately?) and ridiculous character who, I have to say, rather spoiled the book for me.
Overall, it was an uneven reading experience for me with some good writing but some parts that I simply found awkward to read.
November 7, 2019
(3.5) This recently appeared on the BBC’s entirely subjective list of 100 English-language novels that changed the world, under the “Politics, Power & Protest” category. I think I’ve read 10 Shields books now; I had been holding this one, a Booker shortlistee and the last of her major novels I hadn’t read, back for years and years but finally read it for my November book club meeting.
I didn’t like it as much as I expected to, mostly because of the structure: many of the short chapters – each, rather unusually, given a preposition, conjunction, adverb or adjective for a title – are like stand-alone short stories, repeating some of the same basic facts. Narrator Reta Winters, a 44-year-old translator and author of a recent comic novel (My Thyme Is Up, winner of the Offenden Prize, which “honours accessibility” – one feels Shields must have been wryly drawing on her own experience of treading the line between literary and women’s fiction), reminds us at the start of a number of chapters why she’s heartsick: her 19-year-old daughter, Norah, has become a panhandler, sitting outside a Toronto subway station and wearing a sign reading “Goodness.”
For much of the book, Norah is a cipher. To my relief, a few pages from the end we finally learn why she’s undertaken this nine-month silent protest: . Bearing in mind that this is set in 2000–1 and Shields must have written most if not all of it before 9/11 (and of course before the Iraq War), the provoking incident feels prescient.
Yet for most of the book the question of goodness is a purely academic one, as Reta ponders the difference between ‘niceness’, ‘politeness’, ‘charm’ and true goodness (cf. Nick Hornby’s How to Be Good, about a GP who cares about the plight of the homeless and her horrible husband, who at a certain point commits himself to becoming good). She’s startled to hear her new editor say that he most admires her protagonist for her goodness; she’d had no idea that her preoccupations had seeped into her fiction, and by contrast with real life her novel is so tidy and light. It’s no literary masterpiece, she knows, but she’s firm on its feminist bent and resists her editor’s attempts to make the male lead the main character.
This is a great scene, as are the two in which characters interrupt and talk over each other (Shields did this to great effect in the dinner party scene in Larry’s Party, too). I also particularly like the series of letters Reta writes (but never sends) expressing outrage over the invisibility of women in public intellectual life. This is another way in which the novel feels timely 17 years after its publication.
However, the repetitive and melancholy nature of the story-like chapters made it a slow and at times agonizing read for me. I also felt a slight sense of resentment because Reta, and perhaps Shields, is thoughtlessly echoing the dictum that unless you’re a parent, you can’t possibly understand what it’s like to have one of your children in such extreme and precarious circumstances. I’m not a parent, but I’m a person with parallel experiences, imagination and empathy (augmented by my copious reading), so yes, I can understand.
Anyway. If you haven’t read anything by Shields, by all means pick up one of her novels immediately, though I’d recommend The Stone Diaries and Larry’s Party over this one.
I didn’t like it as much as I expected to, mostly because of the structure: many of the short chapters – each, rather unusually, given a preposition, conjunction, adverb or adjective for a title – are like stand-alone short stories, repeating some of the same basic facts. Narrator Reta Winters, a 44-year-old translator and author of a recent comic novel (My Thyme Is Up, winner of the Offenden Prize, which “honours accessibility” – one feels Shields must have been wryly drawing on her own experience of treading the line between literary and women’s fiction), reminds us at the start of a number of chapters why she’s heartsick: her 19-year-old daughter, Norah, has become a panhandler, sitting outside a Toronto subway station and wearing a sign reading “Goodness.”
For much of the book, Norah is a cipher. To my relief, a few pages from the end we finally learn why she’s undertaken this nine-month silent protest: . Bearing in mind that this is set in 2000–1 and Shields must have written most if not all of it before 9/11 (and of course before the Iraq War), the provoking incident feels prescient.
Yet for most of the book the question of goodness is a purely academic one, as Reta ponders the difference between ‘niceness’, ‘politeness’, ‘charm’ and true goodness (cf. Nick Hornby’s How to Be Good, about a GP who cares about the plight of the homeless and her horrible husband, who at a certain point commits himself to becoming good). She’s startled to hear her new editor say that he most admires her protagonist for her goodness; she’d had no idea that her preoccupations had seeped into her fiction, and by contrast with real life her novel is so tidy and light. It’s no literary masterpiece, she knows, but she’s firm on its feminist bent and resists her editor’s attempts to make the male lead the main character.
This is a great scene, as are the two in which characters interrupt and talk over each other (Shields did this to great effect in the dinner party scene in Larry’s Party, too). I also particularly like the series of letters Reta writes (but never sends) expressing outrage over the invisibility of women in public intellectual life. This is another way in which the novel feels timely 17 years after its publication.
However, the repetitive and melancholy nature of the story-like chapters made it a slow and at times agonizing read for me. I also felt a slight sense of resentment because Reta, and perhaps Shields, is thoughtlessly echoing the dictum that unless you’re a parent, you can’t possibly understand what it’s like to have one of your children in such extreme and precarious circumstances. I’m not a parent, but I’m a person with parallel experiences, imagination and empathy (augmented by my copious reading), so yes, I can understand.
Anyway. If you haven’t read anything by Shields, by all means pick up one of her novels immediately, though I’d recommend The Stone Diaries and Larry’s Party over this one.
September 19, 2008
Unless by Carol Shields has been my third novel in a row written from the perspective of a self-analytical, self-critical and perhaps self-obsessed female narrator, the other being by Margaret Drabble and Anne Enright. Maybe Carol Shields drew the short straw, because I felt that Reta, the writer-narrator of Unless, internalised everything, so much so, in fact, that the other characters in the book became no more than projections of themselves within her. Maybe that was part of the point.
Ostensibly about a family of ordinary people, Unless portrays Reta Winters, her partner Tom and their three daughters. They live an hour from Toronto in a home that sounds as big as a village. Reta can’t decide how many rooms there are, or even what might constitute a room. Tom’s a medic and Reta is a published author of moderate success. Not, at least for me, run-of-the-mill ordinary folk.
The eldest daughter, Norah, a nineteen year old determined to make her own marks, has recently left home to live with a boyfriend. She has dropped out of college and then she suddenly took to sleeping rough, occasionally in a hostel for the homeless, whilst, during the day sitting on a street corner behind a sign saying, “Goodness”. Reta can’t rationalise her daughter’s apparent rejection of everything she was supposed to be and begins to delve into her own psyche for clues. It affects her work, her family life and her relationships, all of which must, of course, go on.
Throughout, the narrative is both clear and crisp. Reta’s character is credible, if a little prone to a lack of self-awareness, despite the fact that she seems to have majored in the topic to the extent that her self-preoccupation verges on the obsessive. Her writing progresses, but for me unconvincingly. A light read, something twixt romance and general fiction, is what she is looking for. Quite why the main character needs to be an Albanian trombonist (good at sex, apparently, because of the regular arm-pumping) only Carol Shields knows. There were comic opportunities that were never taken and, equally, possibilities for parallel lives that were never exploited. Personally, I found the scenario of the novel within the novel, as explained by Reta, herself, the writer, offered neither comic relief nor insight. When Reta’s new editor demands that the light fiction be transformed into the literary by means of, amongst other things, redrawing the last chapter to introduce surprise and enigma, undertones, unexpected depth, we are led directly into the unexpected discovery of the reason behind the unexplained behaviour of Reta’s daughter, the events that prompted her drop-out into apparent depression. It ought to have been a poignant moment, but for me it all became a bit pedestrian.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book, by the way. My criticisms are technical at best and petty at worst, but I fell I have to record them. Perhaps it was attempting three psyche-analysing, internally-bound first persons on the trot that got to me. Perhaps I too got lost inside myself as I read. Carol Shields’s “I” was a darned sight more balanced and self-sufficient than either Drabble’s or Enright’s. Perhaps if Reta had made a bit more fuss I would have found her more credible. But that, undoubtedly, was her strength.
Ostensibly about a family of ordinary people, Unless portrays Reta Winters, her partner Tom and their three daughters. They live an hour from Toronto in a home that sounds as big as a village. Reta can’t decide how many rooms there are, or even what might constitute a room. Tom’s a medic and Reta is a published author of moderate success. Not, at least for me, run-of-the-mill ordinary folk.
The eldest daughter, Norah, a nineteen year old determined to make her own marks, has recently left home to live with a boyfriend. She has dropped out of college and then she suddenly took to sleeping rough, occasionally in a hostel for the homeless, whilst, during the day sitting on a street corner behind a sign saying, “Goodness”. Reta can’t rationalise her daughter’s apparent rejection of everything she was supposed to be and begins to delve into her own psyche for clues. It affects her work, her family life and her relationships, all of which must, of course, go on.
Throughout, the narrative is both clear and crisp. Reta’s character is credible, if a little prone to a lack of self-awareness, despite the fact that she seems to have majored in the topic to the extent that her self-preoccupation verges on the obsessive. Her writing progresses, but for me unconvincingly. A light read, something twixt romance and general fiction, is what she is looking for. Quite why the main character needs to be an Albanian trombonist (good at sex, apparently, because of the regular arm-pumping) only Carol Shields knows. There were comic opportunities that were never taken and, equally, possibilities for parallel lives that were never exploited. Personally, I found the scenario of the novel within the novel, as explained by Reta, herself, the writer, offered neither comic relief nor insight. When Reta’s new editor demands that the light fiction be transformed into the literary by means of, amongst other things, redrawing the last chapter to introduce surprise and enigma, undertones, unexpected depth, we are led directly into the unexpected discovery of the reason behind the unexplained behaviour of Reta’s daughter, the events that prompted her drop-out into apparent depression. It ought to have been a poignant moment, but for me it all became a bit pedestrian.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book, by the way. My criticisms are technical at best and petty at worst, but I fell I have to record them. Perhaps it was attempting three psyche-analysing, internally-bound first persons on the trot that got to me. Perhaps I too got lost inside myself as I read. Carol Shields’s “I” was a darned sight more balanced and self-sufficient than either Drabble’s or Enright’s. Perhaps if Reta had made a bit more fuss I would have found her more credible. But that, undoubtedly, was her strength.
Read
January 25, 2018لكن ليست السعادة كما نتصورها ، فالسعادة هي ذلك اللوح الزجاجي الذي تحمله في رأسك ويستنفذ كل براعتك كي تظل متمسكاً به ، وحين يتحطم يتوجب عليك الانتقال إلي نوع آخر من الحياة
ولكننا لا نعرف كيف نطلب ما لا نعرف حتي أننا نريده
القراءة الأولي لـ كارول شيلدز ..
و .. لقد انتهت الرواية معي دون تقييم ..
!
هناك شئ مُحير في هذه الرواية .. شئ يجعلك - ربما - تستمر في القراءة للنهاية علي أمل أن تجد ما يجعلك شغوفاً بها
لا أنكر أن هناك اقتباسات من نوعية السهل الممتنع .. شئ يطرق باب الفكر ويطل برأسه من بين الصفحات وربما يجعلك مستمراً في القراءة علي أمل أن تجد فكرة مشابهة له بعد عدة سطور أو عدة صفحات
شئ يجعلك تقول فجأة .. هذه الكاتبة حقا ماهرة .. لقد قالت ما أريد قوله ..
ولكن ... أين القصة ذاتها .. ؟ أين الحبكة ؟ ..
فانا أقرأ فصولا منفصلة متصلة عن حياة كاتبة في الأربعين من عمرها تحيا رحلة البحث عن النجاح الأدبي من خلال الكتابة والترجمة لأعمال كبار الكتاب
لديها مشكلات أسرية عادية .. ولديها قناعات فلسفية بسيطة .. ومجموعة من الصديقات لكل منهن مشكلة ما
فقط !!
هذا ما وجدته .. فالأمر ليس عويصا علي الفهم ولا يثير الشفقة ولا يُحرك القلب ولا يعصف بالعقل
فقط تقرأه .. وتنتظر ما يٌتعب .. تنتظر المشكلة .. وتنتظر الحل ...
ولكنك تجد السرد فقط .. سرداً رمادي اللون .. ثلجي .. بارد .. لا يُحرك بداخلك تلك الشعلة في القراءة .. ولا الرغبة الكبيرة في الاستمرار
هل أقيمها .. ؟
لا اعتقد ... ولا استطيع
ولا أريد
!
December 23, 2010
I bought this book as a Christmas gift for someone, attracted to it by its recent accolade of competing on Canada Reads. I have never before read anything by Carol Shields, and when I buy books that I haven't read before with the intention of giving them to other people, I tend to read them myself first. So I embarked upon Unless not knowing all that much about it, knowing only that it had won a poll entitling it to a spot in a national debate, only that it was some sort of book about a mother in a city near Toronto with a daughter who lives on a street corner in pursuit of "goodness." And I ended up falling in love with Carol Shields' writing, with the way she describes people and feelings and what matters to us, but I didn't fall in love with Unless.
I seem to be in the habit of reading meta-fictional fiction lately. Books about writers, books about writers writing. Writing about writing. Reta Winters is a moderately successful writer and translator, content in how she has managed to fuse domestic life with her own goals, except, of course, for what has happened with her nineteen-year-old daughter, Norah. As Unless unspools, Reta reflects on her writing, on how it has shaped her, on how writing shapes others, and especially on the role of women in writing. Later chapters begin with an unsent letter Reta has composed to an author or editor, in which she questions why a book or magazine article cited so many influential male authors and no female authors. Meanwhile, Reta alternates between discussing her life, including the slow, simmering story of how and why Norah came to live on a street corner, and discussing with us her plans for a sequel to her novel, a sequel in which she realizes the emancipation of her female narrator.
Rather than confront the whys and wherefores of Norah's societal estrangement directly, Shields has Reta approach the issue sideways. It is as if Reta herself cannot bear to interfere directly; heeding the advice of many, she waits and sees how long Norah can continue this self-imposed homelessness. Instead, she explores what she slowly comes to believe is the reason Norah has chosen to search for goodness on the street corner. She confronts the gender divide in our society, and most notably in how it affects her as a mother and a writer.
Reta, and through her, Shields, are right about this, of course. This week I have been following the #MooreandMe trend on Twitter, started by a feminist blogger outraged by insensitive comments made by Michael Moore regarding the allegations against Julian Assange that he raped two women. Moore and Keith Olbermann's initial reactions to this protest movement, not to mention all the trolls on Twitter, made a point abundantly clear, if you weren't already aware of it: this is still a grossly unequal world. Despite our nominally-democratic, Charter-enshrined (in Canada) society, gender is still a minefield and a battleground.
Shields takes an interesting way of reminding us of this fact, a way that is simultaneously seductively unique yet frustratingly heavy-handed. I like Reta, both as a person and as a narrator. I like all of the Winters: Tom, Norah, Natalie, Christine, Lois. I even like the overbearing, interrupting Arthur Springer—he does mean well, even if he is an example of a man who has been educated by society with certain notions of power, gender, and what readers want. I like them, because Shields makes these characters people. They have flaws, but they try hard. There are no moustache-twirling villains here, nor are there golden messiahs. At the same time, Shields avoids making any of her main characters a subject of spectacle. I think there is a tendency to hype literary fiction that focuses on the spectacular character, the crack addict or the prostitute, the child soldier or the homeless mother. Unless, among all its other charms, brings us ordinary people who, for the most part, do not have any serious problems with their lives. And it makes me care about them, invest three hundred pages in them. That's pretty cool.
Yet I cannot ignore that heavy-handed approach Shields takes to these issues of gender inequity. Maybe it's because I am a man, but there is something alienating it, a fatalistic tone to Reta's melancholic proclamations:
"Because Tom is a man…," because he is outside, he is Other, he can never really comprehend. And I say this not to invoke the rather dim lament of "Oh noes, not feminism! What about the poor mens?!" I just have a difficult time accepting or even considering the idea that there are certain mentalities, certain perspectives, forever inaccessible to me by dint of, as Reta puts it, a seemingly random chromosome determinate. I don't know if that is the case. As a writer I certainly hope not; as a reader I strive my best to access that inaccessible perspective through the voices of narrators like Reta Winters.
Of course, if you have read the book, you might recall the paragraph that immediately follows the one I quoted above. You might, thus, be preparing to call me out, for I have done the questionable thing of taking a passage out of context. I really do like the passage above, as a piece of writing, even if I find the sentiment rather extreme. So, to correct my temporary omission, I will mention that Shields acknowledges her hyperbole:
Additionally, it is clear that Shields' intention is never to alienate nor even to preach. Danielle Westerman is a foil to Reta, a woman whose bitter old age has metamorphosed her feminism into a general kind of misanthropy. It's her class-conscious, power-conflict sentiments that Reta is echoing, and that is only one view of many that surfaces in Unless.
For despite having a single first-person narrator, Unless carries within it a symphony of multiple voices. Shields manages to convey, through Reta, the opinions and ideas of the other characters, assembling a multi-dimensional view of the story as it centres around Norah.
I am, like with much of this book, ambivalent about Norah and her role. I like that Shields does not pursue the reasons behind Norah's choices directly, because that would have made for a very different type of book, something that would almost be a mystery. Yet I feel a little cheated by the resolution. I feel like the way Shields explains the mystery is careless, because we hear it second-hand through Reta, and Norah remains, as she does for the rest of the book, little more than a name with a sign that says "Goodness" attached to it. That being said, I understand why Shields does it this way, revealing that it is not a careless decision at all. For this is Reta's story, not Norah's, and hence it is important to hear how Reta interprets Norah's actions and Norah's reasons, more important than it is to hear Norah herself discuss them. Thus my ambivalence. I want more than Unless can give, more than it should give. I'm just a greedy reader!
The back cover of my edition has two blurbs, one from The Ottawa Citizen and one from The New York Times Book Review, both so glowing and gushing that I'm a little embarrassed, on the book's behalf, by them. These blurbs are falling over themselves to convey to me, with adjectives and adverbs and exclamation points, how much they love Unless. I won't do that. I try, for one thing, to limit the number and type of adverbs and adjectives I expend on any one book. And I fast approach my quota. Moreover, I obviously do not share these blurbs' sentiments when it comes to this book. I liked Unless, and as my unabated intention to give it as a Christmas present attests, this is a book worth reading. Is it a book Canada should read? Not having read any of its contenders, I will withhold my judgement of that.
So I'm not going to tell you that this is "a signal novel, profound and resonant." Let me be clear in the way only stumbling, awkward prose can be: Unless more than doesn't suck, and it is in fact quite good. It has a simplicity that truly makes it a serious, thoughtful work of art. And it deserves accolades and attention. At the risk of sounding trite, I will conclude with a quotation: "Goodness, not greatness," as Reta echoes Danielle Westerman, is what Unless and Carol Shields achieve.
I seem to be in the habit of reading meta-fictional fiction lately. Books about writers, books about writers writing. Writing about writing. Reta Winters is a moderately successful writer and translator, content in how she has managed to fuse domestic life with her own goals, except, of course, for what has happened with her nineteen-year-old daughter, Norah. As Unless unspools, Reta reflects on her writing, on how it has shaped her, on how writing shapes others, and especially on the role of women in writing. Later chapters begin with an unsent letter Reta has composed to an author or editor, in which she questions why a book or magazine article cited so many influential male authors and no female authors. Meanwhile, Reta alternates between discussing her life, including the slow, simmering story of how and why Norah came to live on a street corner, and discussing with us her plans for a sequel to her novel, a sequel in which she realizes the emancipation of her female narrator.
Rather than confront the whys and wherefores of Norah's societal estrangement directly, Shields has Reta approach the issue sideways. It is as if Reta herself cannot bear to interfere directly; heeding the advice of many, she waits and sees how long Norah can continue this self-imposed homelessness. Instead, she explores what she slowly comes to believe is the reason Norah has chosen to search for goodness on the street corner. She confronts the gender divide in our society, and most notably in how it affects her as a mother and a writer.
Reta, and through her, Shields, are right about this, of course. This week I have been following the #MooreandMe trend on Twitter, started by a feminist blogger outraged by insensitive comments made by Michael Moore regarding the allegations against Julian Assange that he raped two women. Moore and Keith Olbermann's initial reactions to this protest movement, not to mention all the trolls on Twitter, made a point abundantly clear, if you weren't already aware of it: this is still a grossly unequal world. Despite our nominally-democratic, Charter-enshrined (in Canada) society, gender is still a minefield and a battleground.
Shields takes an interesting way of reminding us of this fact, a way that is simultaneously seductively unique yet frustratingly heavy-handed. I like Reta, both as a person and as a narrator. I like all of the Winters: Tom, Norah, Natalie, Christine, Lois. I even like the overbearing, interrupting Arthur Springer—he does mean well, even if he is an example of a man who has been educated by society with certain notions of power, gender, and what readers want. I like them, because Shields makes these characters people. They have flaws, but they try hard. There are no moustache-twirling villains here, nor are there golden messiahs. At the same time, Shields avoids making any of her main characters a subject of spectacle. I think there is a tendency to hype literary fiction that focuses on the spectacular character, the crack addict or the prostitute, the child soldier or the homeless mother. Unless, among all its other charms, brings us ordinary people who, for the most part, do not have any serious problems with their lives. And it makes me care about them, invest three hundred pages in them. That's pretty cool.
Yet I cannot ignore that heavy-handed approach Shields takes to these issues of gender inequity. Maybe it's because I am a man, but there is something alienating it, a fatalistic tone to Reta's melancholic proclamations:
Because Tom is a man, because I love him dearly, I haven't told him what I believe: that the world is split in two, between those who are handed power at birth, at gestation, encoded with a seemingly random chromosome determinate that says yes for ever and ever, and those like Norah, like Danielle Westerman, like my mother, like my mother-in-law, like me, like all of us who fall into the uncoded otherness in which the power to assert ourselves and claim our lies has been displaced by a compulsion to shut down our bodies and seal our mouths and be as nothing against the fireworks and streaking stars and blinding light of the Big Bang. That's the problem.
"Because Tom is a man…," because he is outside, he is Other, he can never really comprehend. And I say this not to invoke the rather dim lament of "Oh noes, not feminism! What about the poor mens?!" I just have a difficult time accepting or even considering the idea that there are certain mentalities, certain perspectives, forever inaccessible to me by dint of, as Reta puts it, a seemingly random chromosome determinate. I don't know if that is the case. As a writer I certainly hope not; as a reader I strive my best to access that inaccessible perspective through the voices of narrators like Reta Winters.
Of course, if you have read the book, you might recall the paragraph that immediately follows the one I quoted above. You might, thus, be preparing to call me out, for I have done the questionable thing of taking a passage out of context. I really do like the passage above, as a piece of writing, even if I find the sentiment rather extreme. So, to correct my temporary omission, I will mention that Shields acknowledges her hyperbole:
This cry is overstated; I'm an editor, after all, and recognize purple ink when I see it. The sentiment is excessive, blowsy, loose, womanish. But I am willing to blurt it all out, if only to myself. Blurting is a form of bravery. I'm just catching on to that fact. Arriving late, as always.
Additionally, it is clear that Shields' intention is never to alienate nor even to preach. Danielle Westerman is a foil to Reta, a woman whose bitter old age has metamorphosed her feminism into a general kind of misanthropy. It's her class-conscious, power-conflict sentiments that Reta is echoing, and that is only one view of many that surfaces in Unless.
For despite having a single first-person narrator, Unless carries within it a symphony of multiple voices. Shields manages to convey, through Reta, the opinions and ideas of the other characters, assembling a multi-dimensional view of the story as it centres around Norah.
I am, like with much of this book, ambivalent about Norah and her role. I like that Shields does not pursue the reasons behind Norah's choices directly, because that would have made for a very different type of book, something that would almost be a mystery. Yet I feel a little cheated by the resolution. I feel like the way Shields explains the mystery is careless, because we hear it second-hand through Reta, and Norah remains, as she does for the rest of the book, little more than a name with a sign that says "Goodness" attached to it. That being said, I understand why Shields does it this way, revealing that it is not a careless decision at all. For this is Reta's story, not Norah's, and hence it is important to hear how Reta interprets Norah's actions and Norah's reasons, more important than it is to hear Norah herself discuss them. Thus my ambivalence. I want more than Unless can give, more than it should give. I'm just a greedy reader!
The back cover of my edition has two blurbs, one from The Ottawa Citizen and one from The New York Times Book Review, both so glowing and gushing that I'm a little embarrassed, on the book's behalf, by them. These blurbs are falling over themselves to convey to me, with adjectives and adverbs and exclamation points, how much they love Unless. I won't do that. I try, for one thing, to limit the number and type of adverbs and adjectives I expend on any one book. And I fast approach my quota. Moreover, I obviously do not share these blurbs' sentiments when it comes to this book. I liked Unless, and as my unabated intention to give it as a Christmas present attests, this is a book worth reading. Is it a book Canada should read? Not having read any of its contenders, I will withhold my judgement of that.
So I'm not going to tell you that this is "a signal novel, profound and resonant." Let me be clear in the way only stumbling, awkward prose can be: Unless more than doesn't suck, and it is in fact quite good. It has a simplicity that truly makes it a serious, thoughtful work of art. And it deserves accolades and attention. At the risk of sounding trite, I will conclude with a quotation: "Goodness, not greatness," as Reta echoes Danielle Westerman, is what Unless and Carol Shields achieve.
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