Synopses & Reviews
Forty-four-year-old Reta Winters, wife, mother, writer, and translator, is living a happy life until one of her three daughters drops out of university to sit on a downtown street corner silent and cross-legged with a begging bowl in her lap and a placard round her neck that says "Goodness."
The final book from Pulitzer Prize-winner Carol Shields, Unless is a candid and deeply moving novel from one of the twentieth century's most accomplished and beloved authors.
Review
"A gut-gripping story of one woman's difficult psychological journey, it becomes, in effect, a treatise on goodness and a testament to the several roles women must simultaneously shoulder....Shields shares with fellow Canadian Alice Munro not only her Ontario milieu but also a gift for psychological acuity expressed in limpid, shimmering prose." Brad Hooper, Booklist
Review
"[A] landmark book that constitutes yet another noteworthy addition to Shields's impressive body of work." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Marvelously idiosyncratic, passionate and wise, Shields' tenth novel rollicks from beginning to end with sauciness and wit." Book Magazine
Synopsis
Reta Winters, 44-year-old successful author of light summertime fiction, has always considered herself happy, even blessed. That is, until her oldest daughter Norah mysteriously drops out of college to become a panhandler on a Toronto street corner silent, with a sign around her neck bearing the word Goodness.
Synopsis
"Nothing short of astonishing." -- New Yorker
"A thing of beauty--lucidly written, artfully ordered, riddled with riddles and undergirded with dark layers of philosophical meditations." -- Los Angeles Times
For all of her life, 44 year old Reta Winters has enjoyed the useful monotony of happiness: a loving family, good friends, growing success as a writer of light 'summertime' fiction. But this placid existence is cracked wide open when her beloved eldest daughter, Norah, drops out to sit on a gritty street corner, silent but for the sign around her neck that reads 'GOODNESS.' Reta's search for what drove her daughter to such a desperate statement turns into an unflinching and surprisingly funny meditation on where we find meaning and hope.
The final book from Pulitzer Prize-winner Carol Shields, Unless, is a harrowing but ultimately consoling story of one family's anguish and healing, proving Shields's mastery of extraordinary fictions about ordinary life.
About the Author
Carol Shields was born in Chicago and lived in Canada for most of her life. She is the author of three short story collections and eight novels, including the Pulitzer Prize -- winning The Stone Diaries and Larrys Party, winner of the Orange Prize.