Rating: 
Summary: Exceptional writing
Review: I listened to this story on a book on tape and I loved it. Ms. Shields has a immense grasp of language and uses words perfectly. I thought for days about what "goodness" means to an individual life. Ms. Shields gives thinking women (and men) a place to lose themselves for a few precious days.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I may be the only person in the country who really disliked this book. Contrary to all the glowing reviews, I found UNLESS very disappointing and could barely slog through it to the end. It was glib, filled with superficial emotion, self-absorbed, inconsistent and definitely not humorous. I kept looking at the date of publication to make sure the book was really published in 2002 because it seemed to me like a l950s or early l960s book (at least from the feminist perspective).
At the same time I read this book, I read the Sherman Alexie short story in a recent New Yorker that dealt with homelessness and other tragic/difficult issues with great style and depth and humor - a 5-star read. What a contrast!
And to continue my rant....."unless" doesn't have to be a negative word; and "goodness" is about as meaningful a word as "nice."
Rating: 
Summary: Not a bad story, but Shields could have made more out of it
Review: The major character of "Unless" is a writer called Reta Winters, a 44-year-old mother of 3 girls, happily married. Though her happy family life is disturbed when her eldest daughter, called Norah, abandons university and only sits on a street corner, wearing a sign that reads:GOODNESS. The 50 pages I have read only deal with Reta doing this and doing that (like, e.g. going to the library, having a friend coming over, ..) and whatever she is doing, her mind is fixed on her worries about Norah. ... Not that the story itself is bad, but so many times I had the feeling Carol Shields could have put more personal emotion into her book. Like, for example, Alice Sebold did. While reading "The Lovely Bones", I often could relate to the deep loss and pain of SusieÂ's family. Reta in Unless, though, left me kind of "cold" and I really had troubles to relate to her. Apart from that, in the first 50 pages, there is almost nothing "happening". It is as if Carol Shields is describing everything Reta is doing 24 hours a day, but I wished she would for instance have also described how RetaÂ's husband, NorahÂ's sisters, etc. deal with NorahÂ's change. I do read a broad range of variety in book genres. My favourite authors include: Philip Roth, Haruki Murakami, Yann Martel, Jeffrey Eugenides, and many more. But never have I come across a book that made me lose concentration so easily - sometimes, I almost had to force me to continue reading (again, this usually does not happen to me). So, thatÂ's why I gave up after 50 pages. A book that cannot grip me at least partly within 50 pages is not one I would finish reading. ... Of course, this is only my viewpoint. This book was shortlisted 2 times (at least) for international Literature Awards, so, there must be something special about it. I just could not find that "special thing" out ...
Rating: 
Summary: Good But Forgetable
Review: This book was well-written, but it lacked the lustre of the Stone Diaries or the Republic of Love or Swann, which Shields wrote a number of years ago. The ending of Unless was especially disappointing, as it seemed out of place somehow. Perhaps I expected more depth from a woman living in suburbia, as her life seems to focus on superficiality and pettiness. It's almost as if the main character, Reta, is afraid to feel too deeply or to express the anger that is stewing inside of her. The unexpressed anger becomes depression and Reta becomes a bit of a bore. I would skip this book and try the Stone Diaries or Swann or the Republic of Love.
Rating: 
Summary: effectively understated
Review: I've noticed a few other reviews mentioning Nick Hornsby's, "How to Be Good", which I thought was a delightful and uproarious read, tackling that seemingly eternal theme. Yet, where Hornsby is sly and cynical, Shields displays a tenderness and restraint that I found honestly quite refreshing. Admittedly, I have read few woman authors, but I thought Shields remarkably portrayed the struggle of not only womanhood, but of the underclass and displaced. I'm somewhat confused by other reviewers sensing a lack of plot -- I thought that this was the essential narrative - of a family struggling through a tragedy, and a writer wrestling with her craft in the midst of this. I particularly thought that Shields captured the internal 'war' of writers quite well; writing in the face of personal pain -- and making that writing mean something through the muck. 'Unless' is an incredibly nuanced work. The reverberating feelings of displacement and helplessness spawned by Norah's self-abandonment on a Toronto street corner, and Reta's emotional and intellectual responses to this family upheveal is rather revealing. The ending, which discloses the stunning event that propelled Norah's 'dissapearance from life' left me aghast. As a symbol of the radical pain of womanhood, I thought it was a very powerful image. This, being my introduction to Carol Shields, and in a very real sense, my introduction to female novelists, I am quite impressed and look forward to reading more.
Rating:
Summary: NOT CAROL SHIELDS' BEST, BUT NOT THE WORST EITHER
Review: It's interesting reading these reviews as it appears that other readers believe that UNLESS is either brilliant or nonsense, with minimal variation in between. With that said, I am one of few who reside in the middle. In my own opinion UNLESS is a good book but certainly not a masterpiece. It's a little too skimpy for my own tastes since I prefer books with a little more "meat." A longer length would have enabled Carol Shields to develop the plot and characters to a much greater extent, something I believe is a fault. UNLESS could have easily been a 350 page or greater novel instead of one that barely reached 200 pages. The premise of UNLESS is excellent - a mother coming to terms with the choices her child has made. At the beginning the reader has the impression that Norah, the eldest daughter who is the focus of Carol Shield's latest novel, is deceased due to the grief that is protrayed throughout her family. But the reader soon discovers that Norah is not dead but has dropped out of the University of Toronto and is now pandhandling on a busy street corner in downtown Toronto. Carol Shields slowly reveals the events in Norah's life leading up to her present condition. But there is a vital piece of the puzzle missing as no one understands what makes Norah remain on that street corner in a virtual catatonic state. The question remains unanswered until the end of the novel when all the strings come together. Unlike other reviewers I was not annoyed by the clean ending, the reluctance of the family to force Norah off the street corner or the feminist ideologies broadcasted throughout the novel. But, as I already stated, I would have appreciated more character and plot development. There is room for improvement. For example, I would have liked to known more about the mother-in-law living next door whose life is protrayed as being one-dimensional. In all fairness I do believe that Carol Shields did an excellent job of protraying the family as normal at the surface but saddened below. UNLESS is not the best work of Carol Shields, but it's also not the worst. I am surprised that UNLESS was shortlisted for the 2002 Booker. I believe that other books in this category are far more superior (e.g. FINGERSMITH, LIFE OF PI). But obviously at least one of the judges was in the category that this book is brilliant.
Rating:
Summary: A "serious" novel
Review: This is one of those novels in which it is important, and something of a challenge to distinguish author's views from character's views. A novelist is in pain because her daughter has become a drop out, sitting on a street corner every day. The novelist is also angry, because she theorizes that part (?) of her daughter's problems has to do with feminist issues. The novelist believes women, and women novelists, are not taken seriously, because of male criteria of what is serious. Now, in the "male" sense described by the novelist, this is a more serious novel than most of Shield's, even dealing with the concept of "goodness", although not very successfully; it also has this deep thinking French intellectual character. The novel tends to be somewhat digressive, and I enjoyed that. It has many examples of Shield's scintillating sentences, but perhaps not as many as usual. I had some problems with the ending, which I will now mention: the daughter suffered from bad burns because of a failed attempt to rescue a stranger from suicide, but only after first becoming very depressed herself(recall that the last weekend at home, she did not have the burns). I cannot take seriously, perhaps because I am a man, that the cause of her deep depression is her future role in the world as a woman.
Rating:
Summary: Delicious
Review: I've read some of the other reviews about this book, and found some of them a little bit intriguing. One reader mentionned expecting a fast paced story, as you would find in a mystery or detective novel. This has never been what Carol Shields has been about. She writes in this case about a 44-year-old mother of three/author/translator who tries to cope with her oldest daughter seemingly turning away from life, choosing instead to beg at a Toronto street corner every day with a sign around her neck saying "GOODNESS". Other readers felt it had no plot. Again, Shields develops characters and not intrigues. She tells the story from Reta's point of view. The "plot" is in trying to comprehend the circumstances leading to her daughter's behavior, in figuring out if she, as a mother, has done something wrong, if the same thing will happen to her other children. Also, in figuring out what is goodness. Throughout the narrative, Shields exposes various forms of goodness. This book is filled with interesting, down-to-earth characters, expertly developped by the author. The story contains many humorous touches, not the least of which are Reta's letters to various authors, as she complains about the non-representation of female writers in male writers' essays. I hope you will enjoy this book as much as I did.
Rating:
Summary: Get real!
Review: Passivity drives me nuts, and that's what this book is about. This book reminds me of what is wrong with liberals (and liberal is what I would like to identify with, so it pains me to say this)--they are so civilized and so cerebral that they let outrageous things happen. When Dukakis ran for president years ago he was asked what he would do if his wife was raped, and he said he wouldn't seek harsh punishments for the criminals. Huh? Is he human, or lying? These kind of people observe, they contemplate, they sit passively and watch. Reta, the main character of Unless, seems to be missing her Momma Bear gene. WHO would let their 19-year-old daughter sit on a street corner day in and day out? Come on! Mom would be figuring out a way to get her safe rather than contemplating feminist treatises. Pul-eease! Yes, Shield's writing is good, and she has good ideas, but I didn't buy her reaction for a second. I wanted to get inside the head of the wayward daughter--and the heads of the other two daughters, and the father. I wanted to see true human emotion, not this "precious" and civilized sadness. What did the family do day to day? It seemed like nobody even talked about the problem! And I wanted to find out earlier why the daughter was freaked--not find out in the last 20 pages. I was expecting much more. I'm about Reta's age and I have a daughter who at 19 was a successful student who suddenly had a complete psychotic breakdown (she is 21 now and back to normal). There's no way I could have passively watched her live on a street corner, that's for sure. I temporarily devoted my life to helping her in every way I could. This, I think, is the normal reaction. I've heard other reviewers say that Unless is a quiet little book. Yep. Quiet all right! Too quiet. Let's see some real emotion! Get real!
Rating:
Summary: the danger of missing greatness
Review: Late in Stegner's "Big Rock Candy Mountain" the author explains why the mother in the novel was merely good and only her husband had the potential to be great. The man may drink and fool around, behave with selfish abandon, and damage the lives of everyone around him, but evidently this is not his fault. He might have been great if only his family had not interferred. The women who scrub floors to feed their familes may be good, but is that work, that goodness important? Not enough, apparently, to qualify for greatness. In "Unless" a family struggles to hold itself together despite a bleeding wound. All the members of this family are good, perhaps they are fortunate not to be great since greatness involves sacrifice on the part of loved ones. A "great" father would have continued attending his trilobite meetings instead of turning to the causes and cures for trauma as Reta's partner does. Contrary to the claim in another review, Tom is not one-dimensional at all, but he is not the main character. Reta is the main character. This is her story. This is her story as a mother and parent and life partner, writer and friend. This is the greatness of coping with what life sets fire before us. The novel doesn't attack men, but it does dig deep into the literary mythology of greatness and goodness. The heroic journey of great struggle and grand accomplishment is a literary archetype, but to survive real life we most often need goodness. "Unless" is a domestic story, touching and homorously told. It is a serious story about the only greatness that really matters every day, the only courage which will save us.
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