Review of Unless: A Novel by Carol Shields

Unless: A Novel (HarperCollins, 2002) is the story of Reta Winters, a 44-year-old writer living in Orangetown, Canada, a suburb of Toronto. Reta has all the trappings of an idyllic life: a respectable career; Tom, her partner of 26 years; their three smart, kind teenaged daughters; and a rambling old farmhouse that Reta loves.

However, Reta is struggling with the unexpected loss of her eldest daughter, Norah, not to death, but to an existence completely separate from her family and from the life she so happily lived before: Norah has suddenly and inexplicably dropped out of school and seemingly from life in general, choosing to sit on a street corner in Toronto with a handmade sign hanging around her neck that says one word: goodness. She subsists on handouts from passersby, and any attempts by Reta or her family and friends to talk to Norah or to persuade her to come home are met with silence. They can only leave things for her, knowing that she will give away most of what is given her to other street people.

We are shown a slice of Reta's life as she copes with this heartbreaking situation, surprisingly with a lot of humor. We are introduced to Reta's family and friends, her fellow female writers, her relationships with them and to the world of writing, from passive-aggressive interviewers to sycophantic-yet-overbearing editors, and there is an ongoing theme of a woman's place in the world of writing, as well as the world in general. Reta writes scathingly funny, yet poignant, letters to assorted individuals as a kind of exercise to try to figure out why her daughter "dropped out" of life. Did she withdraw out of a sense of powerlessness, putting herself in such a position of vulnerability and passivity as a way to "claim" that absence of power? Everyone seems to have a theory, but nobody can get Norah to explain her decisions.

Reta spends her days working on a novel of light-hearted, romantic fluff, which serves to distract her, although she begins to see her characters more deeply than, perhaps, she should, as she views them through the focusing lens of the balance of power in male-female relationships. She is drawn sympathetically to the female lead, while the male character becomes ever more bothersome to her. This coincides rather hilariously with her brand new editor's desire to make an artistic statement out of the book, which is intended to be a sequel to a prior light comedy, and to make the annoying, selfish male character practically the sole focus. Those of us who have had editors say they absolutely adore our manuscript before requesting that we change, oh, everything, can sympathize.

I found this book a very absorbing read. Shields has a great way with language, especially dialogue, and she knows when to lighten things up in a realistic way when the subject matter threatens to get ponderous. Reta's letters are interspersed throughout as a kind of food-for-thought snack break, and they are highly entertaining. Shields offers Norah's situation as a storyline to fascinate us with its abnormality, yet folds it into the larger text of relationships and anxiety about one's place in society, to which we can all relate. I would recommend this novel, and I am looking forward to reading other work by Shields, as well.

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