Synopses & Reviews
The idea came up over lunch between two old friends. There was a need for a book that, eschewing sensationalism and simplistic answers, would examine the holes in the fabric of womens talk of the last thirty or forty years. The contributors, a cross-section of women, would be asked to explore defining moments in their lives rarely aired in common discourse: truths they had never shared, subjects they hadnt written about before or otherwise found a place for. What Carol Shields and Marjorie Anderson wanted to hear about were the experiences that had brought unexpected pleasure or disappointment, that somehow had caught each woman unawares. The pieces, woven together, would be a tapestry of stories about what women experience but dont talk about. The resulting book became an instant #1 bestseller.
“Our feeling was that women are so busy protecting themselves and other people that they still feel they have to keep quiet about some subjects,” Carol Shields explained in an interview. Dropped Threads takes as its model the kind of informal discussions women have every day - over coffee, over lunch, over work, over the Internet - and pushes them further, sometimes even into painful territory. Subjects include work, menopause, childbirth, a husbands terminal illness, the loss of a child, getting old, the substance of womens friendships, the power of sexual feelings, the power of power, and that nagging question, “How do I look?” Some of the experiences are instantly recognizable; others are bound to provoke debate or inspire readers to examine their own lives more closely.
The book is a collection of short, engaging pieces by more than thirty women, from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island. Many are mothers, some are grandmothers, and many are professionals, including journalists, professors, lawyers, musicians, a corporate events planner and a senator. Readers will find the personal revelations of some of their favourite authors here, such as Margaret Atwood, Bonnie Burnard, Sharon Butala, Joan Barfoot, Joan Clark and Katherine Govier. Other contributors include:
• Eleanor Wachtel, CBC radio host, talks about her early fears of speaking in public.
• June Callwood, journalist, social activist and a Companion of the Order of Canada, at the age of seventy-six is surprised at her failure to find answers to the imponderable dilemmas surrounding human life, and of her lack of connection to the “apparition” in the mirror.
• Isabel Huggan, short story writer, muses on what she considers the impossibility of mothers passing on knowledge to their daughters, and on her own feeling that “we are girls dressed up in ladies clothing, pretending.”
With writing that is reflective, often amusing, poignant, emotional and profound, Dropped Threads is the first book to tackle the lesser-discussed issues of middle age and is the first anthology the editors have compiled together.
About the Author
Marjorie Anderson is the seventh of eight children born to Ásdis and Thorsteinn Anderson, Icelandic-Canadian fishers, farmers and storytellers who farmed in the hamlet of Libau, on the edges of Lake Winnipeg. She has a Ph.D. in English literature and taught writing and literature at the English department of the University of Manitoba before moving to the universitys I. H. Asper School of Business, where she is now director of communication programs. Her teaching specialties at the Asper School include interpersonal and intercultural communication, oral presentation skills, mediation and negotiation strategies, and conflict management. Through her company, Wordwise Communication, she conducts seminars and training sessions for professional and business organizations. She has been awarded the Faculty of Managements Achievement Award for Excellence in Teaching and has been chosen to teach in a number of international programs, the most recent one being an MBA program in the Czech Republic in the spring of 2000. She and her husband, Gary, live in Winnipeg and have four daughters and five — soon to be seven — grandchildren. .
Anderson has had a lifelong interest in writing and storytelling and has been involved in editing and teaching editing skills for approximately twenty years; therefore, the task of editing Dropped Threads was a comfortable one for her and the collaboration with her friend Carol Shields was a great pleasure.
Born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1935, Carol Shields moved to Canada at the age of twenty-two, after studying at the University of Exeter in England and the University of Ottawa. She started publishing poetry in her thirties, and is now the author of over twenty books, including plays, poetry, essays, short fiction, novels, a work of criticism on Susanna Moodie, and a new short biography of Jane Austen. Her work has been translated into twenty-two languages.
The Stone Diaries (1993), her fictional biography of an ordinary woman who drifts through the roles of child, wife, widow and mother, bewildered even in old age by her inability to understand her place in her own life, received overwhelmingly favourable reviews. The book won a Governor General's Literary Award and a Pulitzer Prize, and was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize, bringing the author an international following. Another novel, Swann, was made into a film, and two more screenplays based on Shieldss books are in production. Larrys Party, published in several countries and recently adapted into a musical stage play, won Englands Orange Prize, given to the best book by a woman writer in the English-speaking world. Shields says it was “a wonderful prize to get.”
Shieldss novels are shrewdly-observed portrayals of everyday middle-class life. Reviewers have praised the author for exploring such universal problems as loneliness and lost opportunities. Shields, who has lived with illness for a number of years, speaks thankfully of her own fulfilling life; a former professor of English at the University of Manitoba and chancellor of the University of Winnipeg, she now lives in Victoria with her husband, a retired engineering professor, and is the mother of five grown children. Thanks to the success of The Stone Diaries, she was able to buy a summer home in France, nicknamed “Château Pulitzer” because the many literary awards she has received have dramatically increased sales of her work around the world.
Shields has spoken often of redeeming the lives of ordinary people by recording them in her works, “especially that group of women who came between the two great women's movements. … I think those women's lives were often thought of as worthless because they only kept house and played bridge. But I think they had value.”
In an eloquent afterword to Dropped Threads, Shields says her own experience has taught her that life was not a mountain to be climbed, but more like a novel with a series of chapters.
Carol Shields passed away in July 2003.
Table of Contents
Foreword
JOAN BARFOOT—Starch, Salt, Chocolate, Wine
LORNA CROZIER—What Stays in the Family
ISABEL HUGGAN—Notes on a Piece for Carol
ANNE HART—Lettuce Turnip and Pea
BONNIE BURNARD—Casseroles
SUSAN LIGHTSTONE—Hope for the Best (Expect the Worst)
MARNI JACKSON—Tuck Me In: Redefining Attachment Between Mothers and Sons
JOAN CLARK—How Do I Look?
CLAUDIA CASPER—Victory
JANET E. BRADLEY—Middle-Aged Musings on Retirement
BETTY JANE WYLIE—The Imaginary Woman
ROSALIE BENOIT WEAVER—Life's Curves
JUNE CALLWOOD—Old Age
JAQUELINE McLEOD ROGERS—Grace After Pressure
MARGARET ATWOOD—If You Can't Say Something Nice, Don't Say Anything At All
CHARLOTTE GRAY—Gilding the Dark Shades
LILY REDMOND—Mrs. Jones
ISLA JAMES—Edited Version
DEBORAH SCHNITZER—Just a Part
MIRIAM TOEWS—A Father's Faith
MARTHA BROOKS—One Woman's Experience with the Ecstatic
SHARON BUTALA—Seeing
MARGARET SHAW-MACKINNON—Birth, Death and the Eleusinian Mysteries
ELEANOR WACHTEL—Speechless
HELEN FOGWILL PORTER—Juliet
RENATE SCHULZ—Hidden in the Hand
KATHERINE GOVIER—Wild Roses
CAROL HUSSA HARVEY and KATHERINE C.H. GARDINER—Reflections from Cyberspace
SANDY FRANCES DUNCAN—I Have Blinds Now
KATHERINE MARTENS—The Joys of Belly Dancing
THE HONOURABLE SHARON CARSTAIRS—Politics: Is It a Woman's Game?
BLANCHE HOWARD—The Anger of Young Men
ANNE GIARDINI—Still Life with Power
NINA LEE COLWILL—The Worth of Women's Work
Afterword
Reading Group Guide
1. Which stories stood out for you and why?
2. Which stories were most disturbing or most surprising and why?
3. Considering that the first volume of this book was on the best seller list of the Globe and Mail for 85 weeks, what do you think accounts for the interest from readers? What do books of this nature offer women?
4. Choose your favourite piece in Dropped Threads and prepare a one-minute testimonial to share with your book club on why this piece touched you.