Rating: 
Summary: Thought provoking for every mother out there...
Review: I have been waiting for a bit of extra cash since last summer to buy this one, and I finally did. Personally, a lot of the feminist talk I find repetitive, and I skipped over it. But it still gets 5 stars from me. I feel I've walked through this house. I feel tender heartbreak at the idea of a child doing something like this, that a mother can not control or fix. I loved the scenes with her new and old editor. The flavor of this book is one that will stay with me for months, I can tell. Thank God I bought it, so I can re-read it every so often. I can't wait to read some of her other works.
Rating: 
Summary: What a waste of time
Review: The problem with reading novels at random, or mostly at random, is that one never knows what one might read. This could be considered adventurous and exciting. It certainly is a valid way to discover an author you've never heard of but find exciting and likeable, especially for those of us not particularly tuned in to the literary world. The flip side of course, if you haven't guessed where I'm leading up to with this, is that one also gets stuck with pointless go-nowhere feminist claptrap like Carol Shields's Unless.Unless what? It begs the question. Unless I read Unless, I might be stuck doing something interesting with my day? I might read something worth reading? I don't know. Let's be specific now. This is a feminist novel, about a feminist novelist, who writes about feminists. There is no second-guessing the viewpoint here. So if you think feminist novels are all about whining women writing about nothing in particular except how terrible the world is because of male oppression, you will be disappointed but not remotely surprised in reading this book. The basic story, if there even is one, is that a woman's college daughter drops out of school one day and sits on a street corner for several months. She does not communicate her reasons. The family copes. The narrator reasons that she has done this because she recognizes how put down women are in our society. If you think my last paragraph is sarcastic, you are correct, but here I am being absolutely, literally true to the novel. To our narrator, it is as clear as day that this is what happened. The rest of the space is filled up with random observations and recollections, conversations with her feminist friends, and occasionally her dealings with her editor, who, as a man, doesn't value her as a human and never lets her finish her sentences. He's actually the only man in the novel who gets more than a few lines at a time. I find myself, in writing this, unable to properly articulate just how exactly this book is lame and pointless. If you've ever watched a "chick flick" on TV and wondered where this dialogue comes from, you may recognize the style of Unless. It's an airy and smug, intellectually sophomoric tone that permeates the book, and makes it clear that the author does not wish to have her tidy little universe corrupted by real world people, which is why you won't find any in her book. If I'm being smug myself, it's because I never imagined a novel could actually be written in this style. If someone had shown me a random fifteen page selection from Unless, I would have assumed they were some sort of satire on feminist writings. I never would have imagined this stuff was serious. Since I've trashed it, it would be intellectually dishonest of me not to point out that Shields does, ever so slightly, pull back from some of her ridiculous claims by the end of the novel. Perhaps she is trying to show that a distraught mother of a disturbed homeless daughter may lash out with a certain amount of nonsense as she tries to make sense of everything. We even do get to find out a specific reason her daughter started sitting out on the street corner. But unfortunately this does not salvage those six or seven hours of my life spent on this drivel. I'm not hesitating to write this review, because I know that if I wait more than a couple days to review Unless, it will fade completely from memory, without a trace left behind, and in a few months or a year, I might even forget that I'd ever read it. That's how deeply this thing touched me.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretentious Twaddle
Review: Well, that's it really. I had to finish it because someone else was waiting for my opinion. I found the little bits of French translation and the awful Danielle Westerman connection very show-offy. In fact the latter's name and opinions appearing on nearly every page drove me to wild laughter before I was halfway through. I thought the whole book was like very bad Anne Tyler, if there can be such a thing, and I didn't believe a word of the plot, or care much what happened to any of them. The only good thing I can say is that someone else paid for the book, so only my time was wasted.
Rating:
Summary: Finally
Review: FINALLY, a novel written from a feminist perspective that never once apologizes, begrudgingly explains or tries to rationalize being feminist. Finally, a novel with parental characters that I can relate to as a '70s-born child of activists. This is a beautifully written, honest exploration of the tug and pull relationships women share,among friends and colleagues, with their daughters,with mothers and mothers-in-law, with literature and the world. I was intrigued by The Stone Diaries, but I loved Unless.
Rating:
Summary: Bathurst and Bore
Review: Bathurst and Bloor, Bathurst and Bloor
If I hear the name of that bloody corner again I will scream
Even one time more. So help me, for 'goodness' sake,
But this story was a bore
Oh yes, that's right--there's a girl named Norah
Do we care about her? Does her pretentious mother Reta?
(Yawn) S-n-o-r-e. The male characters are silly and bland
The women not much better
Even the good-but-not-great
Madame Danielle Westerman And the chapter headings?
Cute, clever, trivial, trite Like the oft-mentioned obsession
Between man and trilobite But alas (also, therefore, theretofore)
I read the whole book from "Here's" to "Not Yet"
So I gladly close the covers
And set aside this meager vignette All right, that's a pathetic poem. And I admit, for some reason I did find enjoyment reading "Unless." Yet as an admirer of the author's short stories, this one, though much longer, falls far short. It was probably the fault of that meddling editor from New York.
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of writing skill but I yearned for a better story
Review: I was prepared to like this recent book. After all, many years ago I had read this author's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, "The Stone Diaries" and enjoyed it immensely. But that was in another time in my life. I was different then. And so is "Unless". Ms. Shields is a skilled writer. She knows that and perhaps that makes her show off her writing skill a little too much. The main character is a writer too, and is obsessed with the meanings of words, the nuances of conversation, the unfolding of memories and how this is all tied up with feminism. She gets so much into the analysis of it all that I soon got tired of thinking of her skill. I wanted the good story that the plot seemed to promise. The book is set in Toronto, where Reta Williams, a 44-year old writer, lives with her husband and three children on the outskirts of town. Her oldest daughter is 19 years old and has chosen to leave the comfortable family home and spend all day sitting on the street begging for money with the word "goodness" on a sign around her neck. At night she sleeps in a state hostel for the homeless and she doesn't speak at all. What I found strange is that the young woman's parents and sisters go to visit her from time to time, sit silently with her, bring her food and warm blankets, but make no aggressive move to change the situation. Instead, the protagonist feels bad about it and writes about it and worries about it. And to keep herself getting obsessed about it, she starts to write a light fictional romance. The author uses a lot of words to tell this story. Much too many words. I soon grew weary of this and couldn't wait to finish the book. And even though the author ties it all together in the last few pages and everyone seems to be able to live happily every after, I just wasn't satisfied. I recommend this book only if you're interested in a clever writing skill. Otherwise, I don't think it's worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: Arrives nowhere
Review: Unless is a book that goes everywhere and arrives nowhere. It is severely fragmented and it lacks depth and development of character. As a reader, you want to feel for Norah and understand her motives but so little and inconclusive information is given along the way that by the time the burning incident is presented, it is easy to lose interest. All the characters and events are loosely held together which impedes the free-flow of the story. The story line had such gut-wrenching and thought-provoking potential-- it was a great dissappointment too see it so poorly developed.
Rating:
Summary: "Goodness" in search of a home....
Review: As a writer and a mother, it wasn't but a few words into this novel by Shields that I found myself holding my breath, holding it in compassion and wonder, in acknowledgement of the artistry witnessed, of the beauty of words used with such mastery. Shields writes about a writer, and she writes about a writer who is a mother. In so many ways, one is the other, the other is the same. The character in her acts of creation sends her own goodness into the world, and while her novels seem to take unpredictable paths in the world of publishing and then in the hands of her reading public, so does her daughter veer off her expected path in life to seemingly abandon it all and sit on the street as a homeless soul, sign hung around her neck: "Goodness." What can drive a young woman to such despair? How can a mother survive her own despair in seeing it? Scenes unfold of a woman who ponders her own writing, a kind of novel inside a novel, and her dealings with a new editor who appears to have her best interests at heart, yet has one soon gritting teeth with just barely suppressed annoyance. A scene of lovemaking between husband and wife, a guilty pleasure and comfort when their child is out on the chill of the streets, is one of the most uniquely written I have ever come across in modern fiction. A topic so overwritten and cliched, Shields manages even this one as if it had been the first, and wholly hers to invent. A scene between mother-in-law and abandoned editor using his salesmanship ploys for public relations over the dinner table they find themselves sharing by chance is another jewel. The treasure keeps on surfacing page after page. Shields writes with rare magnificence. Her story is an achingly simple but important one, as the best stories are, and she once again proves herself worthy of the Pulitzer she has won.
Rating: 
Summary: Well Written
Review: I was expecting this to be Shields' best yet, but unfortunately it just doesn't measure up to her other works. Swann, The Republic of Love, and The Stone Diaries are all better books from this prolific author. Although the book was well-written, it lacked in its depth of emotion and in its richness of plot. The main character is Reta, a mother of three, who is dealing with the fact that her one daughter is choosing to live on the streets of Toronto rather than join her in suburbia. Reta's life seems to focus on superficial things, as she hasn't had to struggle in her career or relationship, so the daughter in crisis causes her to search deeper for meaning in her life. Unfortunately she doesn't delve deep enough and her strength and resilience never comes out. Throughout the book, Reta is afraid to feel too deeply or to express the anger that is stewing inside of her, and instead becomes instrospective about her situation. While her daughter sits on a street corner with a sign saying "goodness" around her neck, Reta meets her friends for coffee and finds way to keep herself busy to avoid the pain of dealing with her 'lost' daughter. When Reta does express grief to her friends, they comfort her by saying, "You have your writing". Reta says nothing in response, and instead thinks about the global powerlessness of women and how women are so busy just trying to maintain their image as 'good' that they miss the opportunity to be great. These feminist observations are interesting, but I would have liked to have seen Reta tell her friends that their comments aren't helpful and the pain and loss is crushing her and causing her to spiral into a depression. Reta is painted as just a victim of circumstance and a tower of passivity. She's likeable, but not memorable as a fictional character. In the novel, motherhood itself is portrayed as nothing special and family bonds seem unimportant. Rheta's relationship with her own husband seems superficial and perfunctory, and there's very little in terms of the family coming together to help each other through this crisis. In fact, Rheta's two other daughters are barely mentioned and no one seems especially concerned about the risks the one daughter is taking by living on the street. Most mothers would force their wayward daughter to go to the hospital where she would likely get the psychiatric care she needs and the whole ordeal would be over with; but instead Rheta just allows her daughter to live on the street even though she doesn't belong there and the likelihood that she'll get killed for her shoes is very much real. Rheta has just wandered through her life up to this point, and she continues to wander through it during this hard time, and ultimately she will wander right out of the memory of the reader because she is nothing remarkable but rather weak, passive and undeserving of respect.
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.
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