This was the last novel Pulitzer Prize winner Carol Shields wrote shortly before she died. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and is considered semi-autobiographical. It's written in the first person voice of its protagonist, Rena Winters, a forty-four year old woman, wife, mother of three daughters, one of whom has inexplicably dropped out of society and spends her days sitting in the street outside a railway station, displaying a hand-written sign saying "Goodness". The reason for this only becomes apparent at the end of the novel. It's a remarkable book, a quiet meandering record of the protagonist's inner struggles with parenthood, writing, marriage and what it means to be a woman in a society where women continue to retreat to the domestic sphere as a kind of refuge and a way of proving their “goodness”.