Customer Reviews

Unless: A Novel (P.S.)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

"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.

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.

This book is the story of a mother's despair when she discovers her daughter has chosen to leave her comfortable, suburban existence and live on the street. Reta Winters is devastated to discover that her daughter Norah is spending her days on a Toronto street corner holding a sign that says "goodness." Her nights are spent in a shelter. Unless enters the interior world of a mother. We learn all of Reta's thoughts; what we learn very little of is Norah herself. Norah is arguably the most interesting character in the book. Instead we get Reta, reminiscing and thinking about all of the elements of her life, her marriage, and her children. Reta has spent her professional life translating the works of French feminist philosopher Danielle Westerman, and writing a chick lit novel of her own. We hear quite a bit about both the novel (which has a sequel in progress) and Westerman. This is far too much for a fictional philosopher whose contribution is never all that well explained, and novels are not especially interesting. Ultimately, Shields never really made me care about any of the characters except Norah, of whom I consistently wanted to hear more. This is one of those book where I suspect there are deeper things going on with the writing, but I simply couldn't engage enough to really investigate them.

I don't understand. How can there only be one review for either paperback edition of this luminously wonderful novel? I am thinking of buying copies for all my friends on the condition that they write their own Amazon reviews as well as sharing the novel with at least one other person. It is that good!

This extraordinary novel speaks to everyone. A must for anyone who loves Shields. The story, the characters, and the language shine!

Perhaps enjoyment of this book depends upon whether one is male or female. I found this to be engaging with themes I've rarely seen written about in this manner. Would recommended to anyone, well, female anyones.

This is the only book that I have read by Shields. It was given to me by a coworker, and I took it along with me to Sicily to read in the sun. My copy is now in a hotel bookshelf in Taormina, so you can help yourself if you find yourself there visiting.

First things first-- Unless was the last book by Shields. Her most famous work is most likely The Stone Diaries. Despite mixed emotions about this novel, I would be inclined to give that work a try.

The comparison is a little bit lame, but I kept hearing echoes of The Golden Notebook in Unless. Unfortunately, I love the Lessing work nearly despite the polemics, and I do not find Shields as strong a writer. She is taking on some very weighty issues in the book-- but somehow, for me, the supporting plot is not nearly sturdy nor meaningful enough to carry the load.

Reta Winters, a 44-year old writer and translator, is in collapse after her daughter Norah drops out of school in order to beg on a Toronto streetcorner (decorated with a sign that reads: "goodness"). Winters examines the neat edges of her life to try to discover where the critical thing became unraveled. She obsesses on influences both external and internal in her effort to find some answers. Along the way, she takes issue with the way that the world treats women, the role of writers and artists (particularly female writers and artists), and literary politics. Unless is an exploration of the link between power and goodness. It takes much of its strength from the contrast between Winters' natural personal balance and her increasingly shrill condemnation of the world. There is also some interesting thinking about the relationship between translation and creation which I would have been delighted to discover in my junior year class on translations as literature.

I resisted the book strongly at the beginning, once I found out what the protagonist's "disaster" actually entailed. Her daughter was, after all, alive. The worry seemed valid, and I understand that we were supposed to read that her life had been charmed until that point. But still, the total collapse did not feel earned. Particularly after I understood how Shields intended to stitch it all together at the end, I felt even more strongly that Norah and her quest for goodness were nothing more than plot points designed to carry the main messages of the book. I needed to believe more in Norah as a character to care as much as Reta did about the events and corresponding issues.

Despite this reserve, the book very nearly won me over. While I struggled at the beginning and the end, I floated through the middle two thirds of the novel. The book did not just keep me inside the world of the story, it did an effective job of turning me outwards and making me think. I was more interested in Winters' novel than I was in her daughter, but that interest was sincere and well-earned.

Overall, uneven and very interesting.

Unless was nominated for a wide variety of prizes, including the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize.

I really wanted to like this book, but I could never really get into it.

I don't believe that the characters were well developed. I didn't have any emotional connections to Reta, Tom, or even her kids.

I will try other books of the author, but to me, this book did not compell me to keep reading.

This book touched me like no other has. It is the best book I have ever read. I think about it, and refer to it, often.