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    Unless: A Novel
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    Unless: A Novel
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    Unless: A Novel
    Ebook270 pages4 hours

    Unless: A Novel

    By Carol Shields

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “Nothing short of astonishing.” — New Yorker

    “A thing of beauty—lucidly written, artfully ordered, riddled with riddles and undergirded with dark layers of philosophical meditations.” — Los Angeles Times

    The final book from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields, Unless, is a harrowing but ultimately consoling story of one family's anguish and healing, proving Shields's mastery of extraordinary fiction about ordinary life.

    For all of her life, 44 year old Reta Winters has enjoyed the useful monotony of happiness: a loving family, good friends, growing success as a writer of light 'summertime' fiction. But this placid existence is cracked wide open when her beloved eldest daughter, Norah, drops out to sit on a gritty street corner, silent but 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.


    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 17, 2009
    ISBN9780061828164
    Unavailable
    Unless: A Novel
    Author

    Carol Shields

    Carol Shields’s novels include Unless; Larry’s Party, winner of The Women’s Prize; The Stone Diaries, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize; The Republic of Love; Happenstance; and Mary Swann. Dressing Up for the Carnivaland Various Miracles, collections of short stories, were later published as The Collected Stories. Brought up in Chicago, Shields lived in Canada from 1957 until her death in 2003.

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    Reviews for Unless

    3.5/5

    791 ratings56 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Rounded down from 3.5 starsNovelist Reta Winters is going through a crisis because her oldest daughter is suddenly living – begging – mutely on the streets of Toronto. (Reta & her husband & two younger daughters live in Orangetown, north of TO.)Full of Shields' characteristic insight into human nature, but I just couldn't seem to become invested in Reta who actually seemed a bit neurotic to me. Beautiful writing though.
    • 3/5
      I'm not quite sure what Carol Shields was trying to achieve by this book, other than she had a few (very important, obviously) opinions she wanted to get off her chest which she tried to weave vaguely into some sort of fictional backdrop.The gist of the book is that the protagonist is an author whose eldest daughter has gone off the rails, spending her days begging on a street corner with the sign 'goodness' around her neck. I can save you a few hours of your life by letting you know that really there's not a lot more too it than that, save for a few sporadic feminist rallies and some (very important, obviously) musings about the challenges her (very clever, obviously) author protagonist is going through. Yawn. Oh, I nearly forgot the (very clever, obviously) observations (and chapter titles) on subordinate conjunctions. Because as women we are all subordinate and ruled by dependencies. Do you see? If we had beards we could scratch them thoughtfully while pondering over that at length. I think I'm done with Shields. She's too consumed with her own writerly self-importance for my taste.2.5 stars - well, I've had no problem getting over to sleep this past week.
    • 2/5
      Not my favorite book. I admired the philosophical underpinnings and the feminist slant but found that the more I read, the less compelling it became. The plot and the characters became secondary mouthpieces to the ideas and opinions the author wished to express. The ending was not very nuanced.
    • 4/5
      Pretty good, conceit piles upon conceit, a writer writing about a writer writing about a writer about writing with a couple of feminist rants thrown in. Some good bon mots though.
    • 5/5
      Unless is the story of a woman trying to raise three daughters while living on the surface of things without doing any deep dives into what she is for or against. This changes when her eldest daughter withdraws from university and takes up living on the street, refusing to explain her actions. Everyone has an opinion on why this happened, which Reta sifts through in search of her own reasoning. Shaken out of happy contentment by worry over her daughter, Reta arrives at some realizations of her own about her moral centre and what she stands for. This novel is accused of wandering about, and in terms of the variety of subject matter that Reta sorts through, that critique has some merit. But what's observable is that no matter what subject she takes up to explore, it all leads her back to her daughter's plight and there is never any escape for long. It's about the search for outlets, and the search for reasons when there are no easy answers at hand. Reta herself is an author, and Carol Shields does some good meta-bits about this that make it work. I loved the ending, even though it felt a bit convenient timing-wise. A story that moves quickly but also hides considerable depth like this is an always welcome combination.
    • 4/5
      In this novel, 44-year-old Reta is trying to finished the sequel to a surprisingly successful light comic novel, working on translating another volume of her elderly mentor's memoirs, and trying NOT to worry about her oldest daughter. Her oldest, Norah, has dropped out of college, left her boyfriend, moved into a hostel, and spends her days panhandling on a Toronto street corner. She won't talk to her parents, she won't even talk to her sisters.It took me a long time to get into this book. It's choppy and vague, stilted and disjointed. But that is also Reta's life--worried about too many things, trying to hold it all together and support her other two teen daughters. Wondering where she and Tom went wrong, or if there is mental illness involved, or if the problems of being a woman in the world (ignored, talked over, seen as and valued as less) are just too much for Norah. Or is Reta projecting her own frustrations?
    • 4/5
      A book about listening to the silence. Reta is a writer, a mother, a friend, and a partner to Tom. The story of Reta revolves around her oldest daughter, Norah, disappearance and migration to a street corner in Toronto as a homeless, mute person. Why is Norah silent? Why is Lois silent? Why is Danielle silent? The book is set in the 2000 but covers a wide time range for woman and feminism. The sixties, seventies are the time periods when Reta was young and growing up. She is translating for an author who is a feminist prior to the sixties. The daughters are of next generation of females. The plot is perhaps a bit choppy but it is reveal by and through Reta’s thoughts, her writings and conversations that Reta has with others. This would be choppy and not linear. The reader knows right away that there is tragedy, that one daughter is missing. Then the reader finds out that after twenty some years, Reta and Tom are not married but Reta changed her name to Winter and she used to be a Summer. I think the book is purposely choppy as it is reflecting the anguish of Reta over her daughter Norah. Her inner life is revolving around the duaghter’s disappearance and ending up on a street corner with a sign that says GOODNESS. I think when life hands a person something like this, the thought life takes over. I think Reta is at first blaming self and probably always will blames self because early on she said she wished she would have “listened” when Norah came home and was trying to talk with her mother. A lot of this book is about “listening”. The epilogue by Eliot talks about hearing grass grow, squirrel hearts beat and the roar on the other side of silence. Reta silent when Gwen takes the scarf that she bought for Norah (do we let others steal from us what we need to give to our children), the silence of Danielle about her early childhood (Reta never asks), the fact that the new editor never listens to Reta and is always cutting her off. So I think the book is about writing, relationships, feminism’s but it is most about silence. The silence of writing (that quiet activity filled with so much noise), the silence of relationships (holding hands walking, sitting beside), the silence of unsent letters, the silence of women being constantly omitted or talked over. Love Shield’s writing.The characters were interesting, some are fleshed out well, others are slowly fleshed out and in Shields’ writing about Reta writing about Alicia and Roman we gain insight into how a author goes about developing their characters and how Shields herself develops her characters. I attended a meet the author event at my local library and the author talked about character development, and it fit so well with what was written here. Achievement; while this book was good. It was nominated and made finalists but did not win any significant awards. The author is the winner of the Pulitzer. The style of this book was stream of conscious, epistolary, conversations with others but mostly through Reta’s inner thoughts and her point of view. I enjoyed the style. I found the book to be readable. It wasn’t slow and it wasn’t agony to pick it up yet it was like listening to grass grow. Wonderful if you stop to enjoy the process.
    • 5/5
      This was Shields' last novel, a wonderfully clever, witty, complicated book about what it's like when one absolutely major thing in your life has gone seriously and inexplicably wrong, but everything else seems to be just fine. And about belonging to a gender that's continually overlooked by people of the other gender, and about being a writer trying to write about writing, and about how it's OK for women to interrupt each other but not for men to interrupt women, and about imaginary letters of complaint, and about what happens if you're afraid to ask the obvious question and try to explain things out of your own imagination, and about many other things.Such a shame that Shields' career as a novelist was cut short so early.
    • 4/5
      A very deeply felt feminist book, in a way I haven't encountered lately. Not harsh, or angry; a sort of soft muted almost passive protest, yet one that came through very clearly, in those unsent letters Reta wrote. All those passive abstract words, adverbs and prepositions: goodness, unless, thereof, despite... "whatever" didn't quite stike the right note, though.A little too distanced from Norah, who I instinctively wanted to be the center of the book. But really it was about Reta, and I can accept that, her trauma of disconnect from her daughter.
    • 5/5
      Shields' final novel is exquisite. She packs more into 200 pages than I knew was possible. While not plot driven, the story is nevertheless intriguing. Reta Winters is a happy novelist, wife, and mother of 3 girls who's never experienced heartache until she discovers that her 19 year old daughter has dropped out of life and is sitting for hours upon the hard Toronto pavement begging, with a sign around her neck reading "Goodness". Norah won't speak to her family, and Reta, unable to break through to her, must try and carry on with her life.The best parts of the book are letters that Reta composes to various authors speaking out against the exclusion of women in their writings. "But did you notice something even more significant: that there is not a single woman mentioned in the whole body of your very long article (16 pages, double columns), not in any context, not once?" Reta becomes convinced that her daughters, as well as herself and all modern women, are undervalued and not recognized for their greatness or potential greatness. "What Norah wants is to belong to the whole world or at least to have, just for a moment, the taste of the whole world in her mouth. But she can't. So she won't."The reviews for this novel are quite mixed, but for me it was truly beautiful and said much that needed to be said. I've read only one other of Shield's novels, The Stone Diaries, which I loved, and I am sad to know that she's passed away. I can't wait to read the full body of her work.
    • 4/5
      I'm still ruminating on this as I just finished it about an hour ago. The book was definitely dark, but the ending made up for it without seeming contrived or unearned. Shields has penned a fascinating character study of one woman facing a year of loss and re-evaluation. With plenty of meta (just how much of Shields is there in Reta Winters?), a book within the book, and a fluid handling of time, this is a complex and carefully constructed meditation on what it means to be a Western woman at the turn of the 21st Century. There's also a slight feel of a mystery as Reta and her husband attempt to determine what has happened (or not happened) to change their daughter so completely.

      August 2007 COTC Book Club selection.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful book.
    • 3/5
      I didn't enjoy this nearly as much as Larry's Party. Though I'm close in age to the narrator, I found I related more to her troubled 19 year old daughter, perhaps because I am not a mother. Really enjoyed aspects of the book but others not so much. The "Thyme" books the narrator was writing are not to my taste and all and found the description of them to be long and boring.
    • 4/5
      The cover of this book makes it look like one of those 'Tragic Life Stories' that occupy a whole bookshelf in WHSmith and which I would rather have all my toenails pulled out than read. In contrast this book is actually very literary, unashamedly cerebral in tone, and has a crick in its neck from all the navel gazing it indulges in.The book's middle aged narrator has a nineteen year old daughter who has chosen to abandon the family home and live on the street, begging. Each of the book's chapters begins and ends with this central fact, meandering around like footprints in the snow that always lead back to the place they began. Though a good nine months pass during the course of the story, it almost seems that time is standing still, as the narrator indulges in the sort of introspection that is the luxury of the comfortably wealthy, trying to understand her daughter's actions. It reminded me a little of Erica Jong without the sex.Oddly enough, as the book reaches its last couple of chapters there is an unexpected flurry of action, as issues raised during the story are resolved. If there was any sense of disappointment in this, it was that we didn't get to hear any more about Mr Springer and his interference with the narrator's work. Their conversational exchanges were the highlight of the book for me.
    • 5/5
      I tend to keep my hands off books with any version of the following back cover sales text: [main character] has all reasons to be happy, but.../then one day... Why do they keep doing this? Anyway, that is a different story, and - luckily, this one I did not keep my hands off.At first sight very simple, but at the same time a complex book of an immensely skillful author who managed to put some very important, very large topics in the least suspected places.The humor, the wisdom and the depth of the understanding for certain human treats is felt throughout the book, and I feel somehow honored to have read it, and that it has given me as much: I am happy to be a person who is able to hear what Carol Shields had to say. I only found out about this being her last work from one of the reviews here, and, knowing this, makes me look at the book slightly differently now. Still, I am glad I read it in a "neutral" state, without that information on the author (who was writing about the author who was writing about an author... ). One passage in the book spoke to me with the loudest voice, on pgs. 148/99 of my copy, where she is writing about the child going through the world unknowingly, confused and hesitantly looking for answers from adults who react as if they have always known everything, and who have apparently forgotten or have never known the unbelievable wonder of the world around them, so this adds to confusion. Their reactions to the child's comments vary from mildly amused to overhearing or ignoring. Their behavior implies to the child that it should know the answers already and makes the child feel ashamed and left out. This is an insight which is terribly important, and I have never read about it before in a book, or anywhere, not like this. I have certainly felt it, like all of us did, if we can or care to remember. Here are a few more quotes:Pg. 106: I'm not interested, the way some people are, in being sad. I've had a look and there's nothing down that road.Pg. 115 (invented quote): Goodness but not greatness. (what women are reduced to)Pg. 158 (of children): 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.Pg. 184 (of husband): We live in each other's shelter: we fit.Pg. 188 (of characters in the book): They yearn - and this is what I can't get my word processor to accept - to be fond of each other, to be charitable, to be mild and merciful. To be barefootedly beautiful in each other's eyes.Pg. 218 (of daughter/all women, invented quote): Subversion of society is possible for a mere few; inversion is more commonly the tactic for the powerless, a retreat from society that borders on the catatonic.Pg. 220 (of daughter/all women): What she sees is an endless series of obstacles, an alignment of locked doors.
    • 5/5
      I first read this book in 2003. Even though it has stayed with me, I re-read it now for Canada Reads, and I"m so glad I did. I am about the same age as the main character, Reta Winters. I, too, have teenaged children and this story talks about the powerlessness a mother can experiences as a beloved child makes a life choice that is dangerous, and incomprehensible. When they are young, you can fix almost anything, but they grow up.....Unless is a story of power and powerlessness. Carol Shields looks at this theme as a mother. Reta Winters has a happy marriage and three healthy, intelligent teenaged daughters. Yet, she cannot save her oldest daughter, Norah, who decides to be homeless and beg on the street with a sign reading "Goodness" hung from her neck.She also explores power from a feminist perspective. As one other reviewer said, women can be good, but not great. Reta Winters makes up letters in her head that she would like to send to people who continue to ignore the contributions and perspectives of women writers. She is faced with an editor who thinks the novel she's writing can "graduate" from chick lit to a serious book by moving the focus from the female to the male character.The book relates the idea of power to greatness in a way that I grasped much more on my second read -- my first time through, I was far more tuned into the story of a parent struggling to understand her child. This time, knowing what happens to Norah, I tuned in more to some of the other messages in the writing.And the writing is powerful. From the first sentence, I was grabbed by Carol Shields' greatness as an author. This, and the Stone Diaries, are my two favourite books by this author.
    • 1/5
      I tried several times to read this book, but the writing style really bugged me and I simply could not get past the first chapter.
    • 3/5
      Enjoyed reading this over a few days.It made me think a little of the tradgedy of Ellen's short life. It made me think about writing. Reta's writing was cathartic, but not through a tell all about her circumstances, through a different lens. It me me think about writing a novel. I'm not sure I'm brave enough.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic book. I've been a Shields fan for a long time, and this is a masterpiece.
    • 3/5
      I really wanted to like this book but found it so flustrating to read. I was willing it along and just wanted it to be over. The actual plot of the book was interesting but with so much needless padding around it I felt like I was just wading through. I have a bit of a thing about finishing books that I start so I trudged on, even though this was a book club book and our meeting had already taken place. This book certainly wouldn't prompt me to search out any of Shields other novels. :(
    • 5/5
      Unless left me with many things to think about and I could relate to the main character in her helplessness with a traumatic event concerning a child. I was touched on many levels (too personal to discuss), but I was also given a few giggles as well, after reading her letters to people who pissed her off. I liked this book so much I went and ordered six other books she has written, and, I am happy to say that once I am done with them there are plenty more to read!
    • 3/5
      A pleasant story.
    • 4/5
      I find that Shields's characters are usually rather boring, a little too anchored in their bourgeois reality. This might have also been the case, had Norah not been sitting on a street corner with her sign Goodness. This injects some mystery from the beginning in the story - why this act of rebellion? Why "goodness"? What prompted it? Reta's rationalizations become a very intimate and personal interpretation of woman's place in today's world: the silence, obedience, acceptance. I became engrossed in these discussions. The term goodness also bothered me: so mild and tempered - why not greatness? But as the story unfolds, we suddenly understand Norah's perspective. While the ending can be accused of being a little too pat, it does not take away from a profound discourse. An enlightening read.
    • 2/5
      While I had sympathy for the author's situation while she wrote this book (she was dying of cancer) I felt she came off as pretentious and preachy. I didn't care about the characters and only finished the book because it was the book of the month for my Book Club.
    • 5/5
      No question. This is a five-star book. I don't have a systematic rating descriptor so I make it up as I go along, but I'm thinking that for me five stars means that I would be reluctant to give this book away and I'll probably have it in my "death-bed reading pile" (which assumes, probably incorrectly, that I will feel like reading when I'm on my 'death-bed'). Anyway, this book was fantastic for me, where I am now. I can't ever speak for others and I have no expertise in English literature, but I reckon this book is just so far ahead of another (although different year) Man Booker listed novel I read recently ["A Cupboard Full of Coats"] that it must have been an all-time great novel which actually beat "Unless" in the year it was listed. (I just looked it up; "Life of Pi" won that year...haven't read it so I can't make a direct comparison). "Unless" seems to have everything going for it in terms of what I look for in a novel: a serious underlying theme; moments of humour; a readable story; contemporary 'western' setting so I can easily relate to it; language which rises well above what I can write (it's easy to achieve that but sometimes I read a book and imagine that even I could have put the sentences together); a believable plot; a satisfying (although not necessarily 'all tidily wrapped up') ending; at least one likable character; emotions (mine, and written about); and not overly complicated in terms of numbers of interconnected characters or plot lines. I'm just so sad that Carol Shields has died and now I've read all her novels.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. I found it easy to read and good certainly relate to the character of the mother and also the daughter who tried to hold it all together for the family. I love Carol Shields' style. She explored many topics in the story including coming of age, women's issues and relationships.
    • 4/5
      By Pulitzer winner. Looks as women's powerlessness: goodness (women) vs. greatness (men).
    • 4/5
      I hated to rate this book so low because Carol Shields writes exquisitely, and she writes about such important issues. But the book just dragged for me. I wanted to see it through to its end so I sped read most of it, slowing for portions that were just too good to rush. Her story was poignant, important and thought provoking, it just couldn't hold my attention in such long stretches of musing. I'm sure it's more of a reflection on my short attention span than it is on her book, but nonetheless I couldn't rate it the same as I would a book that I love dearly, even if her work deserves it, if that makes sense.
    • 3/5
      Half-way through this book, I was bored and about to give up on it."The examined life has had altogether too much good publicity. Introversion is piercingly dull in its circularity and lack of air."The narrator may have said this, but unfortunately she didn't practise what she preached; there was rather too much description of what was going on in Reta's head for my taste and nothing actually happened. But I gave it a second chance and it did improve. There was more information about what happened to Nora and how the rest of the family had reacted to it, Reta's new editor may have been annoying but at least his presence made the story perk up a bit, and the letters Reta wrote to men in her frustration at the invisibility of women in today's world were the best bit of all.Not really my cup of tea though.
    • 4/5
      A mostly melancholy book, but with lots of Carol Sheilds' unique insight, which I love. The concept of women being able to achieve "goodness but not greatness" was a major theme. This book made me think about women's roles, and mother-daughter relationships.