Unless: A Novel (P.S.) [Paperback]

Carol Shields (Author)

Book Description

Series: P.S. | Publication Date: January 3, 2006

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Some hefty perceptions, fortunately shared with us in this fine novel.” (Washington Post Book World )

“A brave, profound, and quirky novel with an undercurrent of the deeply amusing.” (Anita Shreve, author of Sea Glass )

“A superb new novel...a graceful coda, an arabesque performed over an abyss.” (Time Magazine )

“Finely detailed, thoughtful and sometimes even humorous, this book is highly recommended for all fiction collections.” (Library Journal )

“Luminous ... Shields is a consummate master of tone and acute psychological insight.” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette )

“When Shields is good she is very good. There are nuggets of pure gold in Unless.” (Newark Star Ledger )

“A luminous novel ...Shields writes with clarity, intelligence and generosity, finding meaning in most mundane details of home life.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel )

“A landmark book...yet another noteworthy addition to Shields’s impressive body of work.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review) )

“A superb new novel...a graceful coda, an arabesque performed over an abyss.” (Time magazine )

“Her wisdom and generosity of spirit are visible at every turn.” (London Times (Sunday) )

“Entirely satisfying… Shields’ voice, tender and moderated at all times, remains wise and very readable.” (Houston Chronicle )

“All novelists worth their fictional salt can create fine characters; Carol Shields creates lives. ” (New York Times Book Review )

“A raw, subtle, inspiring novel about feminism, femininity, virtue, oppression and motherhood...I was inexpressibly moved by it.” (Rachel Cusk, Daily Telegraph (London) )

“A fitting farewell from an author revered for her graceful, insightful writing...sparkles with wry humor and elegant irony.” (Hartford Courant )

“Shields’s novels and short stories are intensely imagined, humanely generous, beautifully sustained and impeccably detailed.” (Publishers Weekly )

“Nothing short of astonishing.” (The New Yorker )

“A novel of...assured intelligence and defiant vivacity.” (San Francisco Chronicle )

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

“An engaging, memorable novel.” (Cleveland Plain Dealer )

“A wonderful, powerful book, written in a style which combines simplicity and elegance. I found it deeply moving.” (Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat )

“Truly, a miracle of language and perception.” (The Oregonian (Portland) )

“Relentlessly fine...imagined with style and vigor, melancholoy and wisdom.” (San Diego Union-Tribune )

“A fine book, poignant, witty, rich in character, vivid in its sense of place...surprisingly suspenseful.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch )

“With a poet’s precision, Shields dissects grief and makes coping with bad luck feel like domestic heroism.” (People )

“Closely observed moments create the kind of subtle textures and elegant prose that won Ms. Shields the Pulitzer Prize.” (Richmond Times-Dispatch )

“All the trademark Shields delights are robustly present: idiosyncratic plotting; limber prose...deep compassion...tart commentary and irreverent wit.” (Orlando Sentinel )

“Marvelously idiosyncratic, passionate and wise, Shields’ tenth novel rollicks from beginning to end with sauciness and wit.” (Book Magazine )

“Often quietly heartbreaking...often, bitingly humorous.” (Kirkus (starred review) )

“The best of her novels...fearless, smart, funny, beautifully written.” (New Orleans Times-Picayune )

“Remarkably subtle and unsettling...one of those books that make you regret that reading is a solitary pleasure.” (Christian Science Monitor )

“Unless succeeds beautifully...Shields [is] an expert at illuminating the complicated dynamics of off-kilter families.” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution )

About the Author

Carol Shields was born in Chicago and lived in Canada for most of her life. She is the author of three short story collections and eight novels, including the Pulitzer Prize -- winning The Stone Diaries and Larry’s Party, winner of the Orange Prize.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; First Edition edition (January 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060874406
• ISBN-13: 978-0060874407
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #652,330 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wise, and Witty -- A Nuanced Literary Treat, February 12, 2008

By 

B. Case "InquiringMind" (Redondo Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Unless: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)

Carol Shields' last novel, "Unless," is a refreshing intellectual and literary treat. I enjoyed this novel so much I read it twice in quick succession. The novel is a fitting capstone to an illustrious literary career.

There are three stories intertwined in this short novel. First, there is the story of Reta Winters, the mother, a woman whose 18-year-old daughter has inexplicably and suddenly dropped out of life to sit mute on a Toronto street corner panhandling with a sign around her neck reading, "GOODNESS." Second, it is the story of Reta Winters, the author, a woman in the process of writing a comic novel called "My Thyme is Up" and also assisting her feminist mentor, Danielle Westerman, translate her childhood memoirs. Finally, it is the story of Reta Winters, the feminist, a woman quietly raging against the marginalization of women in all walks of life, but especially in the world of literary publishing.

Much of the novel focuses on the nature of goodness. Reta wonders if her daughter's homelessness is some kind of protest against female powerlessness. Perhaps her daughter has suddenly become aware that she must settle for goodness, since greatness still appears to be a realm reserved for men only.

Reta is a 44-year old Canadian writer and translator living in rural Orangetown, Ontario. Reta is a writer in the process of creating a novel...so there is this fascinating infinite digression about a woman writer writing a novel about another woman writer writing a novel. Winters has much to say about the process of writing that is both humorous and insightful, but mostly she rants brilliantly about the marginalization of woman authors.

Reta is a charming, social, busy woman with many friends and responsibilities. She is an intellectual, a feminist, and a social activist. She and her common-law husband, Tom, have three daughters. Until her eldest daughter suddenly takes up living as a homeless person on the streets of Toronto, Reta has been living a life of extraordinary familial happiness. As the book opens, Reta's world is shattered by the loss of her daughter to the streets of Toronto. Her heart is broken--she is grieving, and desperate to understand her daughter's behavior. The novel takes place over the course of a year as Reta copes with her loss and ultimately comes to understand the motivation behind her daughter's actions.

The novel is chock full of feminist rage and humor. The homeless daughter plot holds the piece together, but it is insignificant against the weight of the whole. In my estimation, the whole hangs together mainly through the irresistible wellspring of interior musings from Reta's mind. What keeps you reading is finding out as much as you can about this very real, and most intriguing protagonist.

"Unless" is overflowing with life--a work brimming with ambiguity and nuance. This book is so alive, I swear...one has just to pick it up to feel the heartbeat within.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Conjunctions, July 19, 2010

By 

Roger Brunyate "reader/writer/musician" (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Unless: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)

"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 (mainly adverbs or prepositions) that are hard to define, since they are abstractions of location or relative position, words like therefore, else, other, also, thereof, theretofore, instead, otherwise, despite, already, and not yet." In this, the opening of the final chapter of her final book, Carol Shields explains the structure of her novel, and the oblique nature of its chapter headings: once, wherein, nevertheless, so... . She explains it too well, actually, for coherent narrative is the one thing that her book lacks, at least until the very end. It is a brilliantly-written collection of fragments: family memories, observations on the art of writing, unsent letters to various male recipients chiding them for their chauvinism, and thoughts about a new novel that the protagonist is writing. But not really a story.

Reta Winters, mid-forties, living some miles from Toronto, mother of three teenage daughters, and blessed with a loving partner, has achieved some renown as the translator of the French poet and Holocaust survivor Danielle Westerman. Striking out on her own, she has published a light romance entitled "My Thyme is Up," and her publishers have contracted a sequel, "Thyme in Bloom." But she is mired in bewilderment and grief. Her eldest daughter, Norah, has dropped out of college, left her boyfriend, and spends her days on a street corner in Toronto with a begging bowl and a hand-lettered sign saying GOODNESS. She will not respond to her siblings or parents, who are at a loss to understand the cause of her virtual self-immolation. Reta, a quiet but determined feminist, believes it is a reaction to the condition of being deprived of her voice as a woman, hence those unsent letters. But she does not know, and neither her attempts to analyze the problem, or to channel it into her fiction, or to carry on as normally as possible seem to bring any clarity. The ending, when it comes, seems almost simplistic by comparison with the bafflement that had reigned heretofore.

I have discovered that it makes a difference when one reads a particular book and what one has read before it. For example, I have just read THE NOBODIES ALBUM by Carolyn Parkhurst, another book in which a professional writer uses her fiction to help her come to grips with problems in her own family. Carol Shields is by far the better writer (I loved THE STONE DIARIES), and she recognizes the dangers of this approach. As Reta says, "I too am aware of being in incestuous waters, a woman writer who is writing about a woman writer who is writing." But to state the dangers is not necessarily to avoid them, especially since "Thyme in Bloom" seems altogether too slight an undertaking to reflect either Reta's intelligence or her emotional needs. Between the two books, I also read TINKERS by Paul Harding, another superb writer who strings together brilliant observations on the most slender connecting story. Two books of this kind in a row are one too many. The memoirs of a fictional character do not automatically become a novel just because the writer is not the author. A collection of essays, plot-ideas, and letters do not coalesce into novel form just because a fictional event has caused their fragmentation in the first place. Individual sections of this book are magnificent, but they need more than prepositions to hold them together; they demand conjunctions.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Never really captured me, June 18, 2008

By 

S. Bartholomew (Southern California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Unless: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)

Unless was the first book I read on my Kindle, so maybe that has influenced my feelings about it. I'm not sure. I love the Kindle, but was possibly getting used to reading without the actual feel of a book. Anyway, as others have mentioned, Unless is th story of Reta Winters. her college-aged daughter who has always been a well-adjusted kid, suddenly drops out of school to spend her days begging on a Toronto street corner with a sign around her neck that reads "Goodness." Reta is a succesful author and translator with 2 other daughters and a husband who is a doctor and trilobite-ophile (is that a word?)

Shields writes well enough, but I felt that there was so much more that could be mined from this story. I understand that the idea was to show the effect of her daughters situation on Reta, it just wasn't compelling enough for me to get that interested. Her daughter is on a street corner, but here's Reta having tea with her friends. And here's Reta trying to write the sequel to her novel. And here's Reta meeting with her new editor. It seemed odd to me that her reaction to her daughters situation was not more deeply felt.

This book wouldn't necessarily stop me from checking out some of Shields' other work, but I was left feeling like something had been missed when I was done reading Unless.