Rating: 
Summary: A novel that is both feminine and feminist.
Review: A mother's agonized attempt to help to her 19-year-old daughter Norah, a drop-out who now begs on a street corner while wearing a sign saying "Goodness" around her neck, provides the framework for Shields's thoughtful and sensitive look at women's roles and the juggling acts they sometimes require. Reta Winters, a successful writer, believes at first that by writing a bright, perky novel about "lost children and goodness and going home," she will be "remaking the untenable world through the nib of a pen." But real life--and Shields's real novel--are, of course, much more complex than that.Despite the support of her two younger and very caring daughters, her empathetic husband, her friends, and Danielle Westerman, the French feminist whose books she has translated, Kate nevertheless discovers that trying to help a child who will not be helped is a terrible loneliness to bear: "I need to know I'm not alone in what I apprehend, this awful incompleteness that has been alive inside me all this time." Evaluating her life as a wife, writer, friend, mother, and, increasingly, feminist, Kate allows us to share her inner life, both as it is revealed in her writing and as she wrestles with Norah's "hibernation" on the street corner. Filled with dazzling images (an idea that has "popped out of the ground like the rounded snout of a crocus on a cold lawn" ; women who have been "sent over to the side pocket of the snooker table and made to disappear"), this Shields novel is more meditative than many of her other novels. "I've been trying to focus my thoughts on the immensity, rather than the particular," Kate/Shields says. As she inspires the reader to share this immensity, she provides insights into the essence of who we are and who be might become.
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Summary: AN EXPRESSIVE VOICE READS REMARKABLE PROSE
Review: Two big time winners are paired in this audio book - author Carol Shields took home the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for "The Stone Diaries," and actor Joan Allen has been thrice nominated for an Academy Award and twice named for a Tony. Allen, a Broadway and film veteran, delivers a consummate reading of this story of one family's tragedy set amidst life on the cusp of the 21st century. Listeners will be rapt - seduced by Allen's voice and luxuriating in the author's remarkable prose. Enjoying the fruits of success as a writer and translator, Reta Winters has every reason to believe she has it all - a devoted husband, three outstanding daughters, and a covey of good friends. Her world is tilted when her oldest child leaves college, and deserts family and boyfriend to take up residence on a street corner with a sign reading "Goodness." Understandably anguished Reta tries to fathom what might have caused her daughter to take such action. It is in this search that listeners will find a sometimes disturbing, at other times heartening view of life as it is today. - Gail Cooke
Rating:
Summary: A feminist look at wanting and waiting
Review: This book is absolutely amazing. It tackles one woman's story as she struggles to come to terms with her daughter's stance in the world. Lots of feminist insights are peppered throughout the book and offered in the context of elucidating the mystery of the daughter's refusal to act in the world. The story is engaging and intimate, sad and hopeful. Many things that she wrote resonated with me in a powerful way. I am deeply grateful that she wrote the book, and that I happened to pick it up.
Rating:
Summary: Goodness Becomes Greatness
Review: This is an absolutely astonishing book. UNLESS contains a wonderfully simple story of a family in disarray. The central theme is not unique, the family's college student daughter drops out of school and, with some typically eccentric behavior, tries to drop out of society. The family grieves. Friends and acquaintances offer advice, some good, some bad. Even the family dog is stressed. You've read this story before. But what makes it astonishing is the character development. There is such a sense of recognition for these characters. I felt I've known them all, and want to go on knowing them. Then too, there is a reversal near the end of the book, which I certainly won't reveal, that made me sit back and reevaluate the whole novel. Was I reading a character study, or was I pulled into a mystery novel? The answer to that question is unimportant, in this case. There is also the structure of the novel to consider. The very short chapters whisk the reader along, building a sense of tension. There is a repetition of the primary conflict within each chapter that is compelling. I found myself waiting for the sentence, in each chapter, that would restate the problem. This doesn't get in the way of the story line at all, but compliments it, and in a strange way felt comforting. "Ah, there it is. That's the sentence I was waiting for." There are letters written by the narrator, never mailed, that are humorous, and poignant, and full of outrage over the plight of women in society, in the writing community, in business, in the world at large. At one point, I closed the book, let my head fall back, and broke into laughter. This was when the narrator, who is a writer, contemplates the fact that she is writing about a writer, who is writing about a writer. As the reader, you then add to this mix the knowledge that Ms. Shields in the true writer, writing about a writer, writing about... It becomes a metaphysical experience to the fifth degree. Very clever. This is the first novel I've read by Carol Shields. I intend to read many, many more. Thank you for this simple tale, elegantly told.
Rating: 
Summary: Lorrie Moore meets Margaret Atwood, but...
Review: A tedious book. I was misled by a favorable review in the Financial Times into buying this thing. Gets two stars only because of the author's prose style which has occasional great flashes of succinct wit and beauty. But the main story is boring, boring, boring and not credible. All the characters are far too passive; they drift along borne by a current of events, making little observations as they drift by. Even an academic would surely react less passively to what happens to a beloved daughter. This attitude is a sure receipe for tedium. This book is also a classic example of why novels about novelists writing a novel should never be written; they just dead-end in a hall of mirrors. This one is better than most of this genre, but still flops. The author's repeated explicit statement that "I know this would be dangerous if I were seriously attempting it" in an effort to ironically detach herself from the trap does not succeed. (Authors: Please don't try this at home.) And a news flash: Moaning for pages and pages and pages about how female authors and characters have been marginalized for centuries does not justify the artistic failure inherent in marginalizing all the male characters in the book, who are poorly-realized cardboard cutouts. Avoid.
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Summary: What a mother knows
Review: A mother knows nothing about what her child is thinking but she also knows everything. This book tore at my heart. The powerlessness of a mother and father in the face of an unexplainable act by their oldest daughter, the solidarity of her sisters as they join their sibling at her corner every Saturday, the respecting of boundries set by Nora while offering her tools and gifts for her journey. Reta, the mother, knew there is a battle still to be fought for the full recognition of women and she believed Nora was immobilized by that battle. Reta came to realize that that was actually her personal battle with the world but didn't realize how deeply and totally it was also her daughter's. Shields description of the questions of children is magnificent.
"A child is suspended in a locked closet of unknowing, within the body's borders, that dark place. To name a perplexity is to magnify it. At the same time-I recognized the calumny for what it is-children's natural observations are often thought to be whimsical, even adorable, and their sayings, their mild queries, much quoted and smiled over, but there is no guarantee of an answer. Whey do children risk disclosure at all? It must be out of desperation or unsupportable fear. It's a wonder they don't throw themselves out of windows in fits of confusion."
Rating: 
Summary: Goodness! Gracious! Great Balls of Fire!
Review: There can be few works of literature whose title consists solely of a single conjunction. (Kipling's "If" is probably the most famous). The word "unless" here refers to Ms Shields's theory that human life, like the English language is held together by a few linking words (conjunctions, adjectives and prepositions such as "unless", "although", "nevertheless") which are meaningless in themselves but which gain importance by what they join together). The narrator and central character of this novel is Reta Winters, a middle-aged writer living in a small town near Toronto with her husband and two of her three daughters. Although Reta would appear to have a comfortable middle-class life, the family faces a crisis when their eldest daughter, Norah, drops out of university and goes to live on the streets of Toronto as a beggar, holding a sign with the single word "GOODNESS". The reason why only becomes clear at the very end of the book; for most of the time, both the reader and her family are left in the dark. Not only are Reta and her family unable to understand Norah's behaviour, they are also unable to change it. Norah is legally an adult, and not of unsound mind, so she cannot be compelled to return to her family, and their attempts to persuade her to do so or to reason with her are met with silence. Unable to alter the situation, the family have to get on with their lives as best they can, and much of the book is taken up with descriptions of the defence mechanisms they use to cope with Norah's loss. Her two younger sisters Natalie and Christine get on with their everyday school lives, Tom returns to his work and to his all-consuming hobby, the study of fossil trilobites (which means more to him than his day-job as a doctor), and Reta continues with her round of housework, meetings with friends and work on her latest novel. As one would expect, however, Reta continues to be preoccupied with Norah and tries desperately to understand her. The family come up with various theories- problems with her boyfriend, academic difficulties at university, some unknown trauma- but the explanation which comes to obsess Reta is intimately tied to her own feminist views. Reta believes that Norah has dropped out of a male-dominated society which denies women the chance to achieve "greatness". Deprived of this opportunity, Norah is forced to pursue the only alternative, "goodness", which she is seeking through renunciation of the world. Reta elaborates this theory in a series of letters written to various authors and journalists whom she considers to have undervalued the role of women. (In the end, however, she never posts any of these letters). Unlike some reviewers, I did not see "Unless" as "feminist rant", or even as a feminist work at all. Indeed, it seems quite possible that Ms Shields wrote it as a subtle critique of feminism, or to be more accurate of the ideological tunnel vision to which certain types of feminism (and certain other viewpoints) can lead. By "ideological tunnel vision", I mean the tendency to see all misfortunes as being caused by the one single phenomenon against which one's ideology is directed. As a feminist, Reta blames Norah's condition on male dominance of society, but if she had been a Marxist, she would no doubt have blamed capitalist oppression of the working class. A Freudian would have blamed neuroses arising from psychosexual traumas in childhood, a Christian fundamentalist would have blamed the godlessness of modern society and a militant atheist would have blamed the baleful influence of religion. A flat-earther would probably have blamed the persistence of the illogical belief in a round world. Without wanting to give away the ending of the novel, I can say that when the truth about Norah becomes known, it has nothing to do with Reta's feminist theories. Ms Shields can write well, and some parts of the book are very effective, particularly Reta's memories of her own childhood, and the satirical portrait of her pushy, gushing literary editor Arthur Springer. Nevertheless, the book as a whole is rather static, with little development either of plot or of character. Too much of the book is taken up with the minutiae of Reta's everyday life, and her meetings with her various friends, none of whom emerge as interesting characters in their own right. Indeed, apart from Springer and Reta herself, none of the characters are particularly memorable, even Norah, around whom the plot turns. (At the risk of sounding like Springer, who wants to rewrite Reta's latest novel for her, I felt that the book might have been made more interesting if it had been told from Norah's point of view or using a multiple-narrator technique). Even if the book is seen as a novel of ideas, Ms Shields does not develop her themes as fully as she might. Although Reta spends much of her time musing on "goodness", there is no serious exploration of the theme of what it means to live a good, in the sense of virtuous, life. The point is not, for example, made that in some cultures (especially Hindu and Buddhist ones), to renounce worldly goods and concentrate on spiritual matters while living off the charity of others would be regarded as a deeply virtuous act, whereas in the West, although it has its own hermitic traditions, "goodness" is more often equated with service to one's fellow-men. Given that the novel revolves around Norah's apparent decision to seek "goodness" through renunciation, I felt that more could have been made of these two contrasting concepts of virtue.
Rating:
Summary: A Quiet Elegy
Review: Carol Shields offers a quiet meditation on the mysteries of family. Suspenseful in unexpected ways, this novel peeks into the uncertainties that haunt everyday life. The horror of losing a child (in such an unorthodox manner) and the way in which Reta and her family struggle to balance a quiet, normal life in the face of tragedy gain added resonance through the gentle, sparse prose. The novel burrows deep, and reveals its truths in tiny doses.
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Summary: "Unless" you're estranged ...
Review: The reason I purchased Unless was because I had heard that the book dealt with an estrangement between a mother and a daughter. Since I am estranged from my daughter, this is an issue that I spend some time thinking, reading and writing about.
Unless isn't about estrangement as much as it is about women's place in the world, writing, literature, men, women, anger, silliness, and frustration. An excellent book beautifully written. However, not a book that you'd pick up in order to understand Estrangement. A book to read if you enjoy reading great writing and thinking on many issues that affect women.
So Carol Shield's book was a surprise for me in that it wasn't what I was looking for but I enjoyed reading it.
As far as offering an understanding of inexplicable estrangements, Shields does convey in this book something that I think is true: that estrangements that seem to make no sense are often more about the person who decides to be estranged than they are about issues with the person that they are cutting off. So the answer ... or the resolution ... to the estrangement is in the heart and mind of the person who has estranged themself.
If looking for a book to read that is all about estrangement, Unless is NOT that book. But it is an excellent book to read. Having read this book by Carol Shields, I am more likely now to read some of her other books. I was sad to learn that she has died.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: I kept reading reviews of this book and plot outlines and it just didn't appeal. The whole daughter-on-street-corner-with-Goodness-sign sounded, well, a little dull. What I didn't realize was how well Shields wrote. How beautiful her individual sentences wer. How raw her anger could be. How intricate her delicate plots-within-plots were
I think what I found most inspiring was this idea of a quiet domestic novel that was also passionate and defiant and angry and committed to trying to put the world to rights. It's the digressions that make the book. The wayward internal monologues about life and marriage and family and what it is to be a woman.
I must have missed the news bulletins because it was only after I finished it that I realized that Carol Shields had died. So very sad. And a great loss.
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