Unless - Carol Shields
Unless offers us engrossing proof--if ever we needed it--that Carol Shields is a writer of
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incomparable creative agility, wit and tenderness. In her eight novels (including Orange Prize-winner Larry's Party and two short-story collections she has continued to combine an extraordinary inventiveness with prose of suppleness and grace. Her terrain is the domestic and her thematic ambitions are delivered with a beguiling lightness of touch that never undercuts a depth and seriousness of intent--the perfect velvet glove over the iron fist. Towards the end of Unless its central character, fortysomething Reta Winters--wife, mother, editor, translator and recent novelist--takes issue with how an eminent critic has belatedly bestowed status on her first novel, My Thyme is Up. What had been judged until then as her "fresh, bright springtime piece of fiction" has become... 'a brilliant tour de force', says Professor Casey, and this quote will, of course, appear on the jacket of the sequel...in the same size type as the name Reta Winters, but I am trying not to think what that means." This is just one of countless delicious asides (yet none of Shields' asides are ever throwaway) which Reta makes in her light, self-mocking tone; indeed, she sees herself as a woman for whom "tragedy was someone not liking my book". But into her happy family comes a situation which overshadows all else: the eldest of Reta's three daughters becomes a bag lady on a Toronto street corner, obsessed by goodness, but refusing to speak or be spoken to. This threnody of loss and grief, and Reta's consequent self-questioning, is at the heart of the narrative. Running alongside are chapters taking up Reta's other selves, each narrated in a very different register: Reta as the translator of French feminist texts; Reta as purposeful, and increasingly driven letter writer on the subject of women's exclusion; the frayed author trying to complete her sequel, Thyme in Bloom, in the face of harassment by an editor of woefully dumb and obdurate incomprehension. This woman of many parts allows Shields to reflect--wittily, thoughtfully, playfully, and with wicked subversiveness--on issues of power, on the nature of goodness, the meaning of family, and the place of women. Crucially, she asks how--or even whether--women's voices are heard and "read", how they are (re)interpreted, and given value in the culture. It is these brave and still necessary, if no longer "fashionable", questions, and Carol Shields' enormous capacity to entertain so wisely and unflinchingly, that make Unless such a joy to read.--Ruth Petrie
sight of Larry is Winnipeg in 1977, and the 26 year old is pondering the pluses of Harris tweed, still living at home and realizing he's in love with his girlfriend, Dorrie, a flinty car saleswoman. Larry is proud of his job at Flowerfolks, even though he fell into floral design by accident, and if his relationship with his parents isn't perfect, neither is it that bad. (Stu and Flo Weller may have less page-time in Larry's Party, but they are hugely memorable. He is a master upholsterer, happiest when working, she a woman ruined by nervous guilt having inadvertently killed off her mother-in-law with some improperly preserved green beans.) Carol Shields has said that she had "always been struck by the fact that in most novels people aren't working." Though her hero climbs the floral managerial trellis for 17 years and finds more rhapsody in work than marriage, Larry and Dorrie's honeymoon in England points him toward what will be his true vocation--mazes. These living constructs turn him into a thinker, a man of imagination, and the author's descriptions are quietly spectacular as well as effortlessly sweet. Larry wonders at their "teasing elegance and circularity ... a snail, a scribble, a doodle on the earth's skin with no other directed purpose but to wind its sinuous way around itself." Just as Larry changes with the times--each elliptical chapter ages him by one or two years--so does his art. In 1990, he designs a maze in which you can't really lose yourself. In 1997, the McCord Maze "is intended to mirror the descent into unconscious sleep, followed by a slow awakening." Larry, too, has a slow awakening, taking several false turns before reaching midlife. As the novel closes, with a bravura dinner party scene, he may finally be at ease in the world. But his creator knows that he is only halfway there, and still has to negotiate his way from the centre of the maze to its exit.
yet reflective voice, has been winning over readers since its publication in 1995, when it won the Pulitzer Prize. After a youth marked by sudden death and loss, Daisy escapes into conventionality as a middle-class wife and mother. Years later she becomes a successful gardening columnist and experiences the kind of awakening that thousands of her contemporaries in mid-century yearned for but missed in alcoholism, marital infidelity and bridge clubs. The events of Daisy's life, however, are less compelling than her rich, vividly described inner life-- from her memories of her adoptive mother to her awareness of impending death. Shields' sensuous prose and her deft characterizations have made this, her sixth novel, her most successful yet.
Advantages: speaks to women, interesting story Disadvantages: none
...'Unless' was CarolShields last book before she sadly passed away, and her most striking. The story follows a woman who writes cheery romance-type novels, whose daughter decides to drop out of society and sit on a street corner in Toronto. Whilst trying to figure out what led her daughter to make such a radical life change, Rita thinks about her own role as a mother, a female writer, and the place women hold in western society.
Shields wasn't an overtly feminist writer; her books looked at women through the banalities and simple acts of life, yet what she has to say in 'Unless' is powerful. Her writing is also at its sharpest here, with resoundng metaphors and simple sentences which strike directly into the heart of the reader.
Above all, this is a fascinating story and character study, and Shields keeps us on our toes, guessing...
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Advantages: A great author Disadvantages: She died today
...CarolShields died today. I will miss her! She had a knack, an ability, that special something in an author that made her books almost 'edible'.
Do you know what I mean?
When you pick up a book and begin to read it, and it is like a wonderful meal - each bite makes you want more - to read the whole darn thing in one sitting!
And you see her name on a new book and think - how grand!
Carol lived in Canada, though she was born and lived in the USA as well, she has been adopted as a Canadian author - which is unusual for Canucks (who tend to resent the larger guys south of the border)!
Larry's party is a wonderful story about a guy of about my age - a child of the 1960/70's who goes through a mid life crisis and has to deal with it all.
It is a retell of my story - my life on paper!
I would be remiss if I did not mention her other...
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Advantages: Fast Pace, Page Turner Disadvantages: none
...Intyre
Detective Constable Sam Evans
Detective Constable Stacey Chen
They are later joined by Detective Sergeant Jan Shield from Vice.
The disappearance of the two boys is one of the cold cased they are given to look at, but then a prostitute is found murdered. The MO is the same as four previous murders two years previously, but unfortunately the murderer is locked up in Bradfield Moor mental institution. Irrefutable evidence had secured Derek Tyler’s conviction, DNA and a confession, but there was no way he could have murdered the latest victim.
The team take on the investigation of both cases, although when another prostitute turns up killed in the same way it, this appears the most pressing case.
Tony Hill, a criminal psychologist, has moved to Bradfield to keep an eye on Carol Jordan. He feels guilty about her rape, as he had been...
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