Unless: A Novel

by Carol Shields
Unless: A Novel
published
May 1st 2003 (first published 2002) by Harper Perennial
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binding
Paperback, 336 pages

literary awards
2003 Orange Prize Shortlist

isbn
0007154615   (isbn13: 9780007154616)

description
"A life is full of isolated events," writes Carol Shields near the end of Unless, "but these events, if they are to form a coher...more





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Krenzel
bookshelves: 1001
Read in July, 2008
According to Peter Boxall’s "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die," "Unless," by Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Carol Shields, is a seminal work worthy of being included in the "canon" – at least, according to the first edition of that guide (according to the second edition, published this year, we can now safely die without reading "Unless"). Interestingly, while Carol Shields is (to a limited extent) included in the "canon," one of the...more
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Philip
Philip rated it: 4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars
09/19/08

Unless by Carol Shields has been my third novel in a row written from the perspective of a self-analytical, self-critical and perhaps self-obsessed female narrator, the other being by Margaret Drabble and Anne Enright. Maybe Carol Shields drew the short straw, because I felt that Reta, the writer-narrator of Unless, internalised everything, so much so, in fact, that the other characters in the book became no more than projections of themselves within her. Maybe that was part of the point.

Ost...more
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Choupette White
Choupette rated it: 4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars
09/24/08

bookshelves: 1001-books, amazing-writing, i-wish-i-own, literary-fiction, to-be-re-read
Unless is really quite good. And I really mean quite good, not brilliant, not bad, but quite good. It's quiet and peaceful and pretty and enjoyable without being mindblowing or brilliant. There are many beautiful moments in it, and the language is really nice. I enjoyed it for its subtlety. In fact, it's so subtle that it's difficult to work out why it works as well as it does. Maybe I'll just let the text do the talking.

"I'm not interested, the way some people are, in being ...more
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Amanda
Amanda rated it: 2 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars
05/27/08

bookshelves: fiction
Read in May, 2008
I don't have a whole lot to say about this book. The central premise, that a normal young woman, raised in a normal loving suburban family, would suddenly abandon her life and become a panhandler on the streets of Toronto, is compelling. The concept of having the story told from the perspective of her mother, who has no idea why her daughter has made such a bizarre choice, seems to offer a lot of possibilities for psychological examination. But somehow the whole book seemed to fall a little f...more
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Zinta
Zinta rated it: 5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
11/04/07

bookshelves: fiction
Read in October, 2003
As a writer and a mother, it wasn't but a few words into this novel by Shields that I found myself holding my breath, holding it in compassion and wonder, in acknowledgement of the artistry witnessed, of the beauty of words used with such mastery. Shields writes about a writer, and she writes about a writer who is a mother. In so many ways, one is the other, the other is the same. The character in her acts of creation sends her own goodness into the world, and while her novels seem to take unpre...more
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Cynthia
Cynthia rated it: 1 of 5 stars1 of 5 stars1 of 5 stars1 of 5 stars1 of 5 stars
01/02/08

Read in January, 2004
I was so bored reading this book. It started out boring in the first chapter when she listed all of her works and explained her translations. I'm not one of those type of readers where a book has to immediately grip you in the beginning otherwise you quit. So I kept on reading hoping it would get better... but it didn't.

The book focuses on how Reta deals with her daugher, Norah's, strange decision to live in a shelter and to beg on the streets. Reta starts to believe the reason why Norah be...more
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Pierce
Pierce rated it: 2 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars
12/03/07

Read in November, 2007
recommends it for: Women, I guess.
Kind of self indulgent, maybe? I don't know. People keep telling me it was all about the mother's flustering about with tangental stuff to ignore the problem of her daughter, but if you write a novel about not dealing with something then what people are actually reading is whatever the distraction is, here: Feminism.

And then we find out about the daughter at the end and suddenly it all seems, like: What the fuck was that about? Why did I have to read so many descriptions of your house furnis...more
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Jessica
Jessica rated it: 3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars
05/26/08

Finally finished. It was alright, I suppose. However, I did enjoy the self-conscious gestures towards critical distance and narrative construction. These were well-developed and definitive. I found pleasure in Shields' exploration of these modernist tacts, although I found her feminist perspectives a bit skewed and for the most part, irritating. Her views, I felt, were lacking parallelism and often bordered on the extreme. While many may claim this to be a strong contemporary feminist text, it s...more
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Chelsie
Read in May, 2008
I absolutely love Carol Shields use of irregular words in this book(by irregular I mean unconventional). This book took me longer to read than most because I found myself constantly intrigued by the words she was using and made me feel the need to keep looking them on in the dictionary. Although this book is not typically my style of book, I did find it well thought out and interesting. I loved that Carol Shields made her character, Reta Winters a writer, as so vastly explores the life inside a ...more
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Tara
07/25/07

Read in February, 2003
I had never read Carol Shields before, and yes I'm ashamed to admit it. While living in Japan my father included this book in my Christmas package as it was recommended to him by a bookseller.
I was hesitant to read a female, Canadian author after being traumatized during highschool having to read Margaret Laurence. Seriously, highschool girls should not have to read Laurence, nor the Mayor of Casterbridge.
Immediately on reading the first few pages of Unless, I was struck by Shields prose. It...more
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Rachel
Rachel rated it: 2 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars
01/27/08

Read in January, 2008
I gave this book 2 starts instead of 1 because it actually forced me to finish it. I'm not sure why other than the fact I was STILL wondering why her daughter was on the streetcorner...but once I discovered what I had been looking for throughout the book, I was so dissapointed and angry that I wasted my time. I also like the author of this book in the sense that I enjoyed her intellectual grammar, if you will. I felt like the book was written like a big beautiful poem, with big beautiful words p...more
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Donna
Donna rated it: 4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars
01/19/08

bookshelves: 1001-books, booker-prize, canlit, giller-prize, orange-prize
Read in February, 2004
Great book. Not the best thing I've ever read, but very thought-provoking and extremely well-written. It's touted as a story about a mom whose previously seemingly well-adjusted daughter now sits begging on a Toronto street corner with a sign around her neck reading GOODNESS. In fact, it's less about that daughter, and more about how ordinary folks deal with
extraordinary circumstances. It explores all sorts of family relationships and coping mechanisms and includes a somewhat philosophical dis...more
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Rose
Rose added it
10/03/08

Read in October, 2008
recommends it for: NOBODY!
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
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Jordan
Jordan rated it: 5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
08/02/08

bookshelves: fiction
Read in August, 2008
one of the best books I've read in a while. Shields here gives us a work of what could technically be called "domestic fiction," but then breaks down that same category. The story of Reta Winters, a discontent writer/translator agonized by her daughter's ascetic quietude on a Toronto street, is rooted in the valorization of daily life - the continual rejection of grand stories, the expected, male dominance. And at the same time Shields never positions the narrative as feminist - the po...more
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Alison
08/18/07

bookshelves: contemporaryfiction
Read in May, 2007
recommends it for: women
Unless is by Carol Shields who also wrote The Stone Diaries which won the Pulitzer Prize and was an Oprah's Book Club selection. The story follows a fiction writer and mother of three whose eldest daughter has left home and is living by choice on the streets of Toronto and in a shelter. She is withdrawn from society except for the sign around her neck that reads "Goodness." The plot is slim and the tone of the book is philosophical. I was surprised to find it a page turner due to t...more
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Carolyn
Carolyn rated it: 1 of 5 stars1 of 5 stars1 of 5 stars1 of 5 stars1 of 5 stars
07/30/08

Read in July, 2008
this was the worst book ever. i thought the premise was interesting (the back cover describes a story of a mother who's eldest daughter gives up her college life to live on a street corner wearing a sign that says 'goodness'). the daughter is barely mentioned, however the mother goes into nauseating, never-ending whining about her writing career/lack of writing career.... it's horrid. i kept waiting for her to go into more detail about the daughter, but it never happened. needless to say, i gave...more
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Jennifer
Jennifer rated it: 4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars
08/16/07

bookshelves: bookclub, strongfemalecharacters
Read in August, 2007
I'm still ruminating on this as I just finished it about an hour ago. The book was definitely dark, but the ending made up for it without seeming contrived or unearned. Shields has penned a fascinating character study of one woman facing a year of loss and re-evaluation. With pleny of meta (just how much of Shields is there in Reta Winters?), a book within the book, and a fluid handling of time, this is a complex and carefully constructed meditation on what it means to be a Western woman at t...more
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Liz
12/09/07

bookshelves: 2001-2010
Read in December, 2007
"Unless is the worry word of the English language. It flies like a moth around the ear, you hardly hear it, and yet everything depends on its breathy presence." Carol Shields in Unless

Unless is a contemplative book, told from the perspective of Reta Winters, 44, a translator and writer of light novels, as she copes with, and avoids coping with, an heart-rending event. Thrown out of her placid life, she contemplates her place in the world as writer and as a woman. ...more
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Sondra
Sondra rated it: 4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars
03/29/07

Read in January, 2003
This book was a bit personal for me because I was doing chemotherapy with Carol Shields sitting across from me doing the same, while discussing with one of her daughters what was to become the stage adaptation of this book. I can still see her, confident and together, working while being poisoned at the same time. I can also hear her soft high-pitched voice discussing her middle-aged male character and his opinions about sex. It seems surreal now.

I loved the chapter about the scarf with ...more
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Mary
Mary rated it: 3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars
03/04/08

Read in March, 2008
A woman and mother's reaction to what she consideres real heart break and loss. Quote "Two years ago I inhabitated another kind of life in which I scarecly registered my notion of heartbreak. Hurt feelings, slights, minimal losses, small treacheres and even bad reviews was what I thought sadness was made of." She filled her life with the ordinary and mundane though beneath this exterior the loss (of her daughter) was always registered.

I thought the book was excellent until the ...more
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book data (includes all editions)

avg rating (all editions): 3.60 (841 ratings)
avg rating (this edition): 3.54 (704 ratings)
number of reviews: 136