Wonderful author

"There's something hugely wrong in my life and I'm helpless to change it." That's the theme of this beautifully written book, and perhaps that's why I didn't enjoy it as much as Shields' more distant-from-real-life, Pulitzer Prize winning "The Stone Diaries."
The book follows Canadian novelist Reta Winters through a time in her life when everything is going splendidly. She has a new book deal, she's in love with her husband of two decades, she has great friends, a cozy home, and is the mother of three beautiful daughters. Yet her oldest daughter, Norah, has inexplicably dropped out of college, renounced all worldly possessions and cut all ties with her family to become a street urchin. And so Reta muddles through her life while always keeping Norah in mind, visiting her street corner and the homeless shelter where she sleeps to bring her food and "gifts."

We travel with Reta as she attempts to keep the status quo when the figurative alarm bells are going off.

Shields is able to aptly inject humor into a routinely sad daily life. The novel was entertaining, yet frustrating. And when I got the happy ending that I hoped for throughout the novel, I felt somehow cheated.

Shields is one of my favorite authors, and a rather influential Austen scholar as well. Originally from from Oak Park, IL (like some of my favorite people), she chose Canada for her home after spending some time in Scotland. I was burning through Shields' novels a while back, but decided to slow down after she died. I want to savor her writing, rather than gulping it down.

Unless was her last novel, and it tracks the mysterious breakdown of a young woman who suddenly leaves university, abandons her boyfriend and home, breaks ties with her family, and chooses to sit on a Toronto corner with a sign around her neck that says "Goodness." The novel comes to us in the voice of the girl's mother, who is bewildered by her daughter's disassociation.

I don't want to say much more about the plot of the book, except that things do eventually turn out ok, that the plot of the book is timely, and that Shields was incredibly talented, sensitive, insightful writer. I really wish she had been able to give us another few books.

Unless was this month's selection for my Booker Prize reading group. I have yet to read something off this list that I genuinely enjoyed, and this is no exception, since I usually give at least 3 stars to books I felt compelled to finish. This was more like reading a school assignment against my will. All the drawn-out characters came off very snobby, especially Reta, with her paint-by-numbers ideas on how to write books. She shows her disdain for other writers but her own writing she admits is not great fiction, and frankly doesn't sound very interesting. The letters she never mails complaining about the exclusion of women seems more of a self-perpetuating manifestation of her own isolation and dissatisfaction, but as a whole didn't make sense in the context of the book. That entire idea needed more action and exposition. Structurally, thematically, everything about this book is one big mess. I have no clue how this is an award-winning novel, and I'm so disappointed because Margaret Atwood is one of the reviewers on the back cover. I've read a few of her books - some I enjoyed more than others - but hers have the ability to completely absorb me in the story, whereas this fairly short book I kept putting down and looking for other things to do.

It’s good. It’s good. I was totally immersed in Reta Winters’ world. The ‘I’ aka Reta aka the narrator is so compelling in telling the story. It is almost as if I’m contemplating with my own thoughts thinking about many things offered by this book.

Yes, this book offers so much that I learn so many things from parenting, writing to feminism. Carol Shields also has a very vast range of vocabulary. But it is very readable that I - as English is my 2nd language - don’t find it difficult to understand.

Unless follows Reta Winters, a writer, a wife and a mother, as she struggles with grief after her eldest daughter, Norah, suddenly withdraws from the world she lives in. She leaves her family, abandons her study and breaks up with her bf and later found sitting on a street corner of Toronto, wearing a sign that reads ‘goodness’ and begging.

#allienreads2020

If there was ever a book that could meddle in the very thoughts of my existence, it would have to be Unless.

This is a gem. A small beauty. Highly recommended.

Rounded down from 3.5 stars

Novelist 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.