Rating: 
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.
Rating:
Summary: One of Shields' best
Review: This is a truly fabulous novel. The plot pulls you in right away and the character development is incredible. Of course, the main character's troubled college-aged daughter -- Norah -- is a puzzle, but that's deliberate. You're supposed to spend the entire novel trying to figure her out, make sense of the family dynamics, and so on. This is one of my all-time favorite Carol Shields novels, and that's really saying something.
Rating:
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: 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: 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.
Rating:
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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