Unless

Everything depends on unless. With one deceptively simple sentence, Carol Shields can open a closed mind or pierce the hardest heart. She creates real people who laugh, ache, fall in love and out of innocence. At 44, Reta Winters has a companionable marriage; three intelligent, loving daughters; and a successful writing career. Without warning, her oldest, Norah, drops out of her comfortable life to sit on a Toronto street corner wearing a sign that says 'GOODNESS.' As Reta reflects on her life, on motherhood, the writing process, powerlessness, and humanity, the splendid Joan Allen gives her depth and dimension. Allen's performance precisely captures Reta's initial anguish and, later, her ironic perceptions and sense of humor. UNLESS is a beautifully constructed Chinese puzzle that leaves us surprisingly hopeful. S.J.H. 2003 Audie Award Finalist (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

Starred review from April 29, 2002
"If I have any reputation at all it is for being an editor and scholar, and not for producing, to everyone's amazement, a 'fresh, bright, springtime piece of fiction,' or so it was described in Publishers Weekly." That cheeky self-description sums up the protagonist of Shields's latest, the precocious, compassionate and feisty Reta Winters, an accomplished author who suddenly finds her literary success meaningless when the oldest of her three daughters, Norah, drops out of college to live on the streets of Toronto with a placard labeled "Goodness" hung around her neck. Shields takes an elliptical approach to Winters's dilemma, slowly exploring the possible reasons why a bright, attractive young woman would simply give up and drop out. As Shields makes her way through Winters's literary career, her marriage and the difficulties she and her daughter face in being taken seriously as women in the modern era, she employs an ingenious conceit by tracking Winters's emotions as she tries to write a sequel to her light romantic novel while helping a fellow writer, a Holocaust survivor, work on her memoirs. As Norah's plight deepens and the nature of her decision begins to surface, the romantic novel turns dark and serious, and Winters faces a rewrite when her long-time editor dies and his pedantic successor tries to introduce a sexist plot twist. Reta Winters is a marvelously inventive character whose thought-provoking commentary on the ties between writing, love, art and family are constantly compelling in this unabashedly feminist novel. The icing on the cake is the ending, which introduces a startling but believable twist to the plight of a young woman who, "in doing nothing... has claimed everything." The result is a landmark book that constitutes yet another noteworthy addition to Shields's impressive body of work. (May)FYI:As revealed in an April 14 profile in the
New York Times magazine, Shields, who has terminal breast cancer, believes this will be her last novel.