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 Carol Shields’ 2002 novel Unless tells the story of Reta Winters, a novelist, friend, feminist, and mother. She is mostly concerned with her eldest daughter Norah, who disappears for no apparent reason and then is found begging on a street corner with a cardboard sign that reads “goodness”. Norah remains on the corner for months as her family puzzles over how she ended up there and why she won’t come home.
I always like to start off a conversation about any book be talking about the things we like best about the book. We agreed that in the case of Unless, Shields’ simple writing style combined with deep, perceptive observations make for a captivating story. Comparisons were made to Jane Austen’s narrative style, which follows people going about their daily lives and finds beauty and truth in everyday experiences we can all share. Shields also does a great job of winding countless narratives into one novel; we had to flip back and forth through the book to find all the details of a single storyline, hidden among other characters and plot elements.
The characters in this book talk a lot about the concept of goodness, and we did in our discussion as well. The book doesn’t make any conclusions about what goodness actually is; each character offers their own definition. By sitting on a corner with her cardboard sign, is Norah searching for goodness, or is she trying to be good? Is she bringing goodness to a busy Toronto intersection? She has been traumatized and reacts by making this public protest on the street, but in reality her family is paying for her to stay in a nearby shelter. They visit her often and make sure she has warm clothes to wear while sitting on her street corner.
Reta Winters goes about her own search for the meaning of goodness through her novel writing. We thought that perhaps Reta is taking her insecurity about events in her own life out on the characters in her novel. Writing fiction provides her a means of escapism as well as a method for controlling the lives of others, even while she cannot control her own. Ultimately, Winters decides that her characters will “choose their own destiny”, so to speak. Does this signal the end of her attempt to control things in her own life as well? That’s not entirely clear.
We agreed that some of the best-written sections of the book are the letters Reta Winters writes but does not send. These witty, anger-filled missives are rants against men who refuse to acknowledge the place of women in society. Winters points out their failings with little subtlety. This is our chance as readers to view her at her most honest; it is often only in anger that we really let ourselves go. An otherwise controlled character voices her real opinion on men, life, family, and love. These snippets alone make the book worth reading.
Read this book if you’re looking for a relaxing summer escape, if you like trilobites and trombone players, or if you find yourself caught in a struggle to find the answers to life’s deepest questions. Unless won’t give you the answers, but it will point you to others who have found peace just by asking.
Review by Jennifer Hoyer
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Sunday, 05 February 2012 
