Read: Unless by Carol Shields
Wow.
Go read this if you haven’t already.
Alright, alright, I suppose I ought to say more than that.
This Edit Post window has been sitting open for the most of the morning, mocking me with its blankness. I’ve been doing all sorts of other things to avoid writing this review of Unless – looking up moving checklists, listening to music on iTunes (Sun Kil Moon! Pernice Brothers! Monsters of Folk! The Observatory! Neko Case!), reading blogs, linking those bands’ websites to this blog post…
Why am I having such a hard time writing this one? Perhaps because I liked it a lot. But I can’t say for certain why that’s so. It wasn’t a lighthearted fun read (there is much anguish and pain) although quite a bit was quite funny (I was quite tickled and at the same time irritated by her conversations with her new editor Arthur, for example). I loved that inner thought process of Reta’s, how we get to know her and try to understand her. It is a complicated book. It is a thoughtful book.
“I have no idea what will happen in this book. It is a mere abstraction at the moment, something that’s popped out of the ground like the rounded snout of a crocus on a cold lawn. I’ve stumbled up against thisidea in my clumsy manner, and now the urge to write it won’t go away. This will be a book about lost children, about goodness, and going home and being happy and trying to keep the poison of the printed page in perspective. I’m desperate to know how the story will turn out.”
The New York Times had a great article on Shields back in 2002, in which she explains that she “wanted the book to approach, in some way, the situation in which she found herself three years ago, when her placid, fortunate life cleaved into a ‘before’ and an ‘after.’”
I suppose I should have mentioned this earlier, but essentially the ‘after’ is Reta’s daughter Norah dropping out of school to live on the street, for ‘goodness’:
“It is abrupt and brutal. It’s killing us. What will really kill us, though, is the day we don’t find her sitting on her chosen square of pavement.” But Reta’s life goes on, she has the rest of her family to take care of, a house to clean, meals to cook, a novel to write, and some works to translate.
A lot of times, reading is a form of escape, a way to leave this mundane world we live in and enter a place we know not of. But Unless is a lot about these routine mundane tasks of life, an exploration of this woman’s life as she tries to deal with the ‘loss’ of her daughter.
That doesn’t quite sound like it would tempt anyone to read this book. But there is just something about Shields’ writing. It is insightful, complex and yet comforting that all I wanted to do was lie in bed and read it. And when I turned its last page, I was just that little bit disappointed that the story and the writing was at its end.
As a book written by a woman and featuring a female main character, I reckon this fits the Women Unbound Challenge (challenge page).
Shields is one of my favorite authors. So sad she is no longer with us. I liked Unless a lot as well. The one she is most famous for, The Stone DIaries, is one of my least favorite. But I like all of her work. I have a big collection of her short stories that I am afraid to begin reading because it is the last of her work and then there will be nothing new.
Unless is only my second book by Shields so I look forward to reading more. But I too would be quite sad if I knew I had only the last of her books to read…
I seem to be on the opposite end of the experience. I read Unless and don’t remember being terribly impressed, but I’m a firm believer that our age and experience have a huge impact on how we read and how much we like what we read. I was in my early 20s at best when I read Unless, and as I approach 30 and am having a child of my own now, I might read this one very differently at this point in time. I’m glad you had such good luck with it!
I know what you mean. I wasn’t quite so sure if this were my cup of tea when I first began it (and having picked it up and put it back on the library shelf quite a few library visits before) but in the end, Shields’ writing just captured me. I hope you pick it up again!
It is a difficult book to summarize isn’t it. Maybe that’s partly the point. If the story is, in part, an homage to the small bits (words like unless, and otherwise) and acts that hold together the larger bits, perhaps it can’t help but feel a little fragmentary, touching so many subjects of importance. She is definitely one of my favourite writers, even down to the B.I.P. quote that inspired my site.
Wow, you put it quite perfectly!
i liked this one a lot too. and especially how ti started so slowly and all of a sudden all the serious topics started to creep in and the book won momentum and force. i like it a lot more than stone diaries too.
Hi and thanks for dropping by and leaving a comment! I definitely need to go pick up more Shields… as soon as I can get a new library card!